Return
by Shilyn
Summary: Sequel to Runaway. A bargain Rin can't resist turns into a trap when an earthquake swallows her daughter Saya. Alone Saya faces humanity and the cruel reality of being a halfbreed. Meanwhile Sess faces a disease unlike any other. Can Rin save her family?
1. Prologue

A/N: This story is a sequel/continuation to _**Runaway**_, if you have not read that one, I strongly recommend that you read that story first because you're going to get into this one and shout, "Who the hell is this Ginrei chick?" It's just better if you start at the beginning at least of my Sesshomaru/Rin storyline. The storyline extends even farther back, beginning at _So Much For The Hanyou's Happy Ending,_ and then going into _With Our Arms Wide Open._

Basic summaries: **summaries:** Naraku is dead and gone. In the years since then Sesshomaru has trained and raised **Rin** and eventually taken her as his mate. But their children will be hanyou, infertile hybrids. (Go look it up, I'm not kidding.) He must marry an inuyoukai to have heirs for the Western Lands. (All this was learned in _So Much for the Hanyou's Happy Ending.)_

(In _Runaway)_ **Sesshomaru** aides in a civil war in the Middle Lands that destroys an entire clan, the Nishiyori clan, to obtain his pure-blooded wife. The one inuyoukai woman that is spared in the slaughter becomes his wife. This is **Ginrei.** **Rin** knows none of this, but she finds out…chaos ensues. Seriously, go read it I don't want to give it all away here.

**Hanone** is Ginrei's daughter with Sesshomaru. She is Sesshomaru's second born child.

**Saya** is Rin's daughter with Sesshomaru. She is the firstborn child.

**A final note:** the very first part of this story is foreshadow. It hasn't happened yet at all, it's a hint for where all this will lead. The next sequence, where Rin is dreaming, is "present day" if you will. I'm experimenting slightly with this prologue by using non-linear storytelling. Non-linear equals not a straight line. It will be linear basically after this prologue. Hope that isn't too confusing…

* * *

**Prologue: Goddess of Fertility**

They woke in the same moment in time, but hundreds of miles apart. The first girl gasped and sprang up, her body quivering. Her skin was damp and chilled, her long hair was plastered to her flesh, a few strands were caught in her mouth. She pulled them free even as she continued to suck in the air hungrily, like a fish flopping inside the net of the fisherman.

The wind blew over her body, making her hold herself and writhe away from it. She realized slowly, with childlike innocence and astonishment, that she was naked. Leaves, twigs, and beach sand coated one side of her body. She brushed the debris free with clawed fingers.

Her nose told her a story of trees, and of the salty sea…her ears brought the sound of its waves crashing up on the shore, she could feel its deep, earthly rumble in her thighs where they touched the ground. She had never seen the sea before, only heard stories of it from her mother.

She glanced upward and saw the pine trees rising above her head, high into the starry nighttime sky. They rustled as the wind passed through them. Somewhere overhead bats whizzed by, squeaking with their sonar voices.

Slowly, she pushed herself upright and began walking unsteadily. Her legs were rail-thin and they wobbled underneath her as if she was learning how to walk all over again. There was a layer of beach sand beneath the decaying leaves of this forest. The ocean was close by, somewhere to her right through the blackness. The sand slipped away from her toes and the tiny girl paused to glance down at it curiously. Beach sand was a new phenomenon for her.

There was a line of rocks ahead, and tree stumps. The forest thinned out. She toddled forward, stumbling several times but picking herself up again without pause. There was a smell from up ahead: fire and wood smoke and food. She became convinced that her mother was ahead, waiting beside the fire. Her sister must be somewhere nearby as well, she could remember running with her under the sun, laughing…

She gave herself no time to consider how she had mysteriously passed from that happy, normal memory to this strange forest in the dark. There was nothing between those memories and her current reality. It was instantaneous. One moment she had been racing with her sister, competing with her as always. Grass and pollen scents filling her nose, the warm sun on her robes, the sound of her mother's voice calling for her.

And then she'd awoken in the beach sand, beneath the trees and the stars.

She reached the end of the forest and stopped short, gasping in shock. The forest ended in a sheer drop of at least ten feet. Yet, directly below, firelight flickered from the stones. The girl could see the firelight; smell the food and the smoke. She spotted a female figure sitting near the campfire. The firelight illuminated the woman's hair just enough that it revealed the color as being dark, a deep black…for a moment she opened her mouth, preparing to shout out to the woman on the desperate, wild thought that this was her mother—but even through the food and smoke smells, she could pick out the woman's scent. It wasn't her mother. Her eyes watered and she coughed, pulling back from the rising column of smoke.

The cough alerted the woman by the fire and she called out, "Who's there?"

The voice was older, raspier than the girl's mother. The girl hesitated. She had met very few strangers in her short lifetime; she wasn't sure how to react.

"Who's there?" the woman called again, a little less loudly now.

The girl smelled the fish from the fire and felt the chill of the wind rising from the salty sea. She choked on the strength of the smoke and abruptly felt fear swarm over her. It wasn't an emotion she was accustomed to. The tears came immediately after. She sank to her knees and wrapped her arms around them and started to cry loudly.

Voices echoed from below. "Do you hear that?"

"It sounds like a child…"

"Hello! Hello out there!" these were men's voices now, loud and strong, echoing from the rocks. The girl had even less of an idea of how to respond to them. Yet at the same time, she hadn't the slightest idea how she was going to get down to the beach from the cliff. The idea of the food kept her from running as the voices continued to call out, searching for her.

The ground vibrated a few times beneath her as footsteps approached. The girl scurried behind a boulder, perilously close to the edge of the cliff. She sniffled and ducked low, hoping that the man that had come running after her wouldn't find her…

He did.

For years afterwards the people of the tiny fishing village Kagainsen would recall with awe the story of the spirit child they found in the forest at the beach. A pale child with hair as white as freshly fallen snow and a purple crescent moon in the center of her forehead.

Her name was Saya and she was only four years old.

* * *

(_A few months previously…)_

A wind whispered past Rin's ears, gently. It spoke to her in a deep woman's voice, almost seductively. The fine hair around her ears and on her neck prickled, sending shivers through her body, made heavy with sleep.

_The time comes, Rin._

Rin moaned in her sleep and moved her head. Her lips twitched. She felt a coolness against her face, almost a wetness. She started to waken slowly at first and then rapidly with alarm. She was alone in her futon, the furs and blankets were gone. Where was Saya? Where was Sesshomaru? She searched around the room but found that the air was thick with a wet bank of fog. Had this come off the river?

They were at Jouka, a palace hidden away in the mountains where, years ago, Sesshomaru had left her after Naraku had been killed. She had grown into a woman, contained inside Jouka's walls. Elegant and educated, but unbelievably lonely and filled with longing.

"Saya?" she called out, weakly, waving one hand at the mist. "Sesshomaru?"

The wind passed through the mist, swirling it eerily. With it came the voice that had originally stirred Rin out of her sleep. _Soon now, the time is coming. _

Feeling foolish, Rin addressed this strange, faint voice, her own wavering weakly. "What time…?

_Ginrei._

Rin felt her face twist up into a frown of confusion. She banished it quickly and forced herself to think rationally, though it was hard. Her mind was sluggish, almost immobile. Through the haze in her mind Rin decided that she was dreaming. The sensations were bizarrely real, but Rin was certain that she wasn't truly awake. The lack of coverings over her futon seemed utterly _wrong_ to her, as did the emptiness of the bed at her side. She never slept alone since the birth of her only child, Saya.

Closing her eyes, Rin laid her head back onto the futon and willed the dream to end silently. Her empty, chilled fingers reached over the mattress, seeking her daughter's warmth. "Saya…"

The voice rose again, taunting Rin with its words. _Your mate will go to her._

Her lips felt swollen and itchy when she spoke. "I'm only dreaming." Inwardly she thought: _I don't listen to dream-voices. _And then immediately after a different, swift thought passed over mind. It was quick and ashamed, like an unfaithful lover creeping back into his own home after-hours. _Sesshomaru would consult me first. He wouldn't hurt me again._

The voice answered her darkly. _He is youkai. By nature, he will be driven. In some matters there is no choice. _

Rin sat up, searching the mist frantically. Her brow furrowed, troubled. "What are you?"

_I am Life; I am the seeds planted in the field, the sunlight on the water. I am the earth. You may call me Koeru._

If Rin had lived among humans she would've understood the significance of the name. In the far north of Japan humans worshipped a fertility and earth goddess who was said to watch over the harvests, both in agriculture and in the hunt. Under her watchful eye deer, fish, rabbits, and other game were plentiful and easily caught. The rice flourished too, giving over its crop to the multitudes of hungry villagers.

But there were many kinds of fertility. Koeru did not simply imbibe the soil with life or the wombs and nests of the animals, her magic worked on people too. And youkai.

Rin knew nothing of this, but when the mists swarmed at her, she felt her skin prickle with the unseen power of the being hiding within them. Trying to repress the shivers of fear, she cleared her throat and called out, "Leave me!"

The mist surged in closer to her, as if ignoring her plea completely. Almost spiting her by doing the exact opposite. The voice whispered around her now, echoing through the mist. _You cannot give your mate what he most desires. Your blood blemishes his heirs. I have the power to change that. He will never touch Ginrei again. _

Rin swatted at the mists and covered her face with her other hand. "Leave me alone!"

_I have the power to give you a son._

"I don't want…" Rin fought the sudden rush of heat in her face, the fierce pressure in her chest. She'd been about to say that she was happy with her daughter, Saya. That much was true, but she _did_ long for another child. Although she was no longer estranged from Sesshomaru—the couple had resumed their intimacy gradually—she hadn't fallen pregnant yet. The months continued to pass and her monthly bleeding continued unabated. She adored Saya, as she was certain Sesshomaru did too, but she wanted to give Saya a sibling. Two hanyou children stood a better chance of survival if something happened to Rin or Sesshomaru somehow.

There was Saya's half-sister Hanone too of course, but although Rin didn't expect the little girls to begin fighting one another like Sesshomaru and Inuyasha, the rift of species or race would come between them. Saya would never be as close to Hanone as she would be to a full-blooded sibling. Hanone also, in turn, would grow away from her sister and closer to her own kind as she aged. Perhaps she would even begin to see Saya as a _disgusting half breed._

The voice rose again, deep but powerful and distinctly female. _Yes, you do. You cannot lie to me, I am the goddess Koeru. I can see right into you, Lady Rin. Your child has stopped suckling, your milk has dried up, yet there is no life growing inside you. _

Rin's hands shot out, searching the futon around her for something she could use as a weapon. Her eyes streamed from the mist. It wasn't painful, but her body was reacting to the closeness of the powerful being that was, in gaseous form, enveloping her. If she had been older and recalled the incident better, she might've thought of Naraku in his final moments of deathly agony. The miasma, spreading outward, like a mist that was trying to poison the killers who had finally vanquished him with their desperate need for vengeance. Her voice croaked out a cry for help: "Sesshomaru…"

_I am here to help you,_ the voice continued to purr, _when the springtime comes Lady Ginrei will reach her time. Your mate will be irresistibly drawn to her. At that time, should you have changed your mind Lady Rin, call out to me, to Koeru, Goddess of Life. I will be waiting for you…_

Squirming and writhing, Rin coughed, wiping at her eyes. "Go away!" the grayness surrounding her face, coating her skin in moisture, was blinding. "Sesshomaru!" she cried.

Another deep voice spoke then, rumbling with power. But unlike the voice of the goddess, this was a masculine voice. Rin jolted upright, blinking wildly as she realized that she had indeed been dreaming. The room around her was lightening with the first signs of dawn. The covers on the futon were lush, gray colored furs. Rin saw the outlines of her slim legs under the furs, felt the chilly early spring air around her face and entering her lungs with each swift, panicked intake of breath.

A blazingly hot touch reached her back and Rin gasped, nearly jumping out of her skin. She turned around, clutching the furs close to her body as she realized that she was naked. Lying at her side was the source of the masculine voice that had at last called her out of the strange, disturbing dream. It was Sesshomaru, watching her silently with a wide, completely alert and awake stare. Had she been calling his name aloud? She tried to read his face but the light was too faint for her to do it with any certainty.

"Rin?" he asked, gently.

She nodded and worked to calm her breathing. Slowly, Rin slipped back onto the futon with her fur covers and lied flat. She watched the ceiling, seeing the first red streaks of sunlight rising with the dawn. What did red sunrises mean? Good weather, bad weather? Good luck, bad luck? She couldn't remember.

Sesshomaru watched her wordlessly. His amber eyes shone through the dim light, intense and alert. Rin shivered at his side, trying to resist the urge to turn and stare into those eyes. Her memory returned to her swiftly as she lied at his side beneath the furs. He didn't always share her bed, but in this instance it was his way of bidding her goodbye. They'd sent Saya to sleep with the ever-trustworthy Jaken that night while they reaffirmed their relationship physically. Although Sesshomaru had no true need for sleep as a youkai, unless perhaps he was injured, he often stayed with her through the night, watching over her while she slept.

Tomorrow he was leaving, she recalled. He was going to move through the Western Lands, patrolling his territory as he frequently did to check up on the other youkai and humans living within it. At the end of his journey he would pass into the Isei province of the Middle Lands and visit the palace he'd won there through warfare. In fact the entire Isei province was actually a part of the Western Lands now. The secret palace, built over a shallow lake, was called Naishougoto. Staying sheltered away inside Naishougoto was Sesshomaru's legal wife, an inuyoukai named Ginrei.

And with Ginrei was Hanone, Sesshomaru's full-blooded inuyoukai daughter. The first and so far only pureblooded heir he had. Saya's younger half-sister.

"You are troubled." Sesshomaru observed aloud in a powerful, authority-laden voice.

Rin drew in a breath but cut herself off midway through. The breath was uneven, wavering. Irritated with herself, Rin closed her eyes. "My lord, when you visit Naishougoto…"

Sesshomaru made a small, deep noise in his throat, irritation. He was visiting Naishougoto as a dutiful husband and father. Many times over the last week he'd explained his reasons for going. He wanted to make sure that Ginrei was happy and he wanted to see Hanone in particular. The visit was not an affectionate one. It was rather like his patrolling the lands and borders, by dropping in unexpectedly on Hanone and Ginrei and seeing them with his own eyes Sesshomaru made sure that Ginrei was loyal to him and that Hanone would know who her father was.

He favored Rin, he'd always made that clear, even if he hadn't always been honest. Trust was still a delicate thing between them, despite the passage of over three years.

"I will stay there one day only." Sesshomaru told her, stiffly.

"That's not it." Rin murmured, shaking her head against the futon lightly. "I would ask Lord Sesshomaru to bring Lady Ginrei and Hanone back with him to Jouka."

The request startled Sesshomaru, he blinked and his eyes roved over her face, searchingly. Rin didn't return his questioning gaze, merely continued to stare at the ceiling and wait for his response. Rin had overcome most of her hostile feelings toward Sesshomaru's wife. It was a necessary evil that couldn't be undone now. Ginrei had no other family, just her tiny daughter Hanone. Rin owed it to Saya to befriend Ginrei for Hanone's sake. The human woman and the inuyoukai woman were mutually bound by their daughters who shared the same powerful, majestic father.

It was clear through his long pause that Sesshomaru was confused by her request and tempted to turn it down simply because he didn't understand it. Yet, at last, Sesshomaru turned away from her. "I will do as you ask, if you are certain of your request."

"I am." Rin sighed, trying to sound as though she were releasing tension. "Saya will be happy to see Hanone. I wonder a lot whether she really remembers her." for a time Rin had lived at Naishougoto with Ginrei and Hanone, but when Saya was nearly a year old they'd left the secret palace behind and returned to a palace in the Western Lands, Jouka. Years ago, Rin had been raised at Jouka. It made complete sense to her that she would raise her daughter within the same palace walls. Unlike Rin, Saya would be loved and never lonely.

"It is a good idea." Sesshomaru responded. When Rin peeked at him she saw that he had closed his eyes. It almost appeared that he was sleeping.

Rin followed his motion with her own, closing her eyes, willing sleep to return to her.

If Ginrei was in the same palace as she and Sesshomaru, Rin would know if Sesshomaru and Ginrei suddenly became affectionate, she would know if her mate slept with his wife. If the bizarre dream was right, Rin vowed that it wouldn't be a secret from her.

* * *

In the Middle Lands, Lord Shimofuri was the supreme ruler, though he was young as far as inuyoukai were concerned. Three years ago the Middle Lands had been torn apart by Sesshomaru when his mate, pregnant at the time, had vanished. Sesshomaru was convinced that Shimofuri had taken Rin away from him when the truth was that Rin had left with Shimofuri willingly. In fact she'd _demanded_ that he take her with him.

Another ruler in the Middle Lands, Arasoizuki, had faced Sesshomaru unaware of the other inuyoukai's wrath. He'd paid with his life. His entire castle and his province were shredded. However, Arasoizuki's wife Yamome and one of his sons had escaped with their lives. Now they huddled in the far north of Japan with Yamome's clan. A marriage had been suggested between Yamome and Shimofuri as a way for Yamome and her clan, in Arasoizuki's memory, to continue ruling the Itou province in the Middle Lands. The marriage would connect the clan in the north with the Middle Lands and give them a shoe-in to ruling the whole of the Middle Lands because if Shimofuri and Yamome had children they would become the heirs of the capital province, Nanka.

Shimofuri had turned the marriage down, however. The Itou province remained officially leaderless, waiting for Arasoizuki's son to grow old enough to claim his birthright.

Shimofuri remained a notable bachelor. For three years he'd resided peacefully in the Nanka province, inside his castle hidden away. His half sister, a hanyou, stayed with him, his only real company aside from advisers.

In the northern Hokubo province Shimofuri's uncle, Sasugainu, unofficially left his wife and two daughters to watch over and rebuild the empty Itou province. He'd ushered in a successful era inside the Itou. Humans prospered, demon attacks subsided, crops were abundant, disease rare. Throughout the Middle Lands the damage was gradually healing…

And then news arrived to Shimofuri that his aunt, Sasugainu's wife Hokinsha, had died. Shocked, for he hadn't known that Hokinsha was ill, Shimofuri and his sister, Tsukiyume, left the Nanka to console their uncle and offer their respects to their aunt.

When Shimofuri and Tsukiyume arrived Sasugainu's castle didn't seem grief stricken as Shimofuri had imagined. The servants and priests carried about their business dry-eyed and soberly, but when Shimofuri sat in his uncle's audience room, he thought the guards and the maids acted as though they were bored. Grief was usually a tangible thing, making the air heavy and forcing people and youkai alike into a slowness…Sasugainu's court behaved as if no one had died at all. It was true that Sasugainu had been estranged from his wife, blaming her casually for his lack of sons. He claimed that she'd deliberately denied him heirs because she'd never cared for him. She'd loved a cousin and despised her arranged marriage.

Sasugainu greeted his niece and nephew cordially. The maids served tea and then vanished. There was a long moment of silence and Sasugainu tapped his clawed fingers against the tray that his tea rested on. He was distinctly irritated.

"Uncle?" Tsukiyume asked, curiously. She was a small girl with long, straight black hair. White dog ears crowned the top of her head. Her eyes were a light brown with a ring of orange around the pupils.

Sasugainu made a sniffing sound, "We're waiting for my daughters."

It was rare that their uncle allowed his daughters to entertain guests, even family, with him. Tsukiyume and Shimofuri had almost never seen their cousins.

Shimofuri cleared his throat. "Uncle, I am deeply sorry for your loss. Lady Hokinsha will be much missed. She was a powerful, intelligent woman…" the words were formal and proper, but Shimofuri felt his face redden as he realized that there was a lump growing in his throat of true grief. Hokinsha had been related to Shimofuri distantly, through his father. She'd shared Shimofuri's gray eyes and his blue-black hair because she came from Nishiyori's family. Nishiyori had ruled the Isei province, during war his entire clan had been slain and the Isei turned over to Sesshomaru. There was only one pureblooded survivor of that atrocity and she was married to Sesshomaru.

"I anticipated Hokinsha's death." Sasugainu told them, gruntingly. "She'd been ill for some time."

Tsukiyume and Shimofuri blinked together with surprise. Shimofuri bowed apologetically to his uncle. "You had not mentioned her illness when you met with me this fall or in the winter."

"She was sick for two years." Sasugainu mumbled, staring off into the nothingness. "I did not hear of it until she was deathly ill two months ago. By that time logic told me that she would not recover from so long and so stubborn an illness."

It would be rude for Tsukiyume and Shimofuri to ask what illness had caused Hokinsha's death, but the desire to do so was great. Inuyoukai were felled by only the very worst of diseases and fevers. They could succumb to bacterial infection like every other life form, but debilitating human illnesses like cancer or cholera or polio didn't affect them. If an illness killed an inuyoukai it was often sudden and brought on by a battle wound. Hokinsha was a wife, pampered inside the palace. It didn't seem likely that a paper-cut could've killed her.

Abruptly the door open and a servant knelt and announced the arrival of Sasugainu's two daughters. "Lady Amagumori and Lady Soeki." He called in a high, flowery voice.

Two inuyoukai women flowed into the room. The eldest was Amagumori who more closely resembled her father with his white hair, but unlike Sasugainu's who had green eyes; Amagumori had her mother's gray-blue eyes. Soeki was the younger daughter and appeared nearly identical to her mother. Her hair was almost the same shade as Shimofuri's, a deep blue-black.

The girls were solemn. Of everyone in the castle it was they who mourned Hokinsha's passing the most. Both girls were of marriageable age, but Sasugainu had kept them rather than marry them off, not as treasures, but more as if he'd forgotten they existed. Amagumori and Soeki sat just behind their father, one on each side of him, and kept their eyes downcast, their hands folded in their laps demurely.

"Finally." Sasugainu barked. He shifted in his spot and stared at Shimofuri, pinning him with his green gaze. "Without my wife to look after the Hokubo province, I am forced to return to my position and leave the Itou unguarded. There is still work to be done there, much rebuilding. Occasionally one of Arasoizuki's kinsmen from the north comes down to meet with me. As I am their normal contact, I am loath to turn over the Itou to a human samurai or an adviser. I am glad you are here, Nephew, I have much to discuss with you."

The smile on Sasugainu's face was so happy, so pleased, that Shimofuri felt a queasy jolt pass through his body. He fought the desire to scowl at his uncle and say, _your wife has just died, her spirit can still be felt in this palace. You can only think business? Your daughters are grieving…_

When Shimofuri didn't answer readily, Sasugainu went on, assuming that his nephew was ready and listening to his proposals. "I have often thought that you, young Shimofuri," the aforementioned young ruler bristled at his uncle's term _young_ as it were a threat, "…are in dire need of marriage. You must secure the Nanka with male heirs. Arasoizuki's kin in the north are keen on our territories. You have too much time on your hands at any rate."

Shimofuri bowed to his uncle. "I am honored to be in your thoughts, Uncle, but I must insist that there are no suitable matches currently…"

"Nonsense!" Sasugainu exploded, grinningly, "There are two matches sitting directly behind me."

Everyone within the room except Sasugainu gawked stupidly for a moment. Amagumori and Soeki glanced up, their eyes wide with shock. For a moment Soeki opened her mouth and started to speak in protest, but Sasugainu anticipated her interruption and raised one clawed hand up so that she would see it. The sharp motion made her flinch and snap her mouth immediately closed.

"Uncle…" Shimofuri shook his head and allowed his face to twist into a deep furrowed frown. "Lady Amagumori and Lady Soeki are related to me through you and through Lady Hokinsha both. My father was from the Nishiyori clan just as Lady Hokinsha was…"

Sasugainu was still smiling triumphantly. "That is true. My daughters are your cousins, but the relation is distant enough. You will keep the bloodlines purer than you know, Nephew. Your mother was the firstborn, so it was she that inherited the Nanka and became supreme ruler."

Shimofuri nodded, "Yes, it is the firstborn's right if the father sees fit…" and Shimofuri's grandfather, Sasugainu's father, had preferred Shimofuri's mother over Sasugainu, his second born. Shimofuri had never given any thought to the situation. His grandfather, Koshoshiro, had been dead for centuries. Shimofuri's mother, Lady Taikokajin, had been dead close to a decade. The pain of that loss, however, still made him swallow hard and blink to banish any thought of tears.

"She was a woman," Sasugainu continued hurriedly, "And our father's favorite. It was his favoritism that won her the Nanka. I have no qualms with my sister for our father's choice—but Shimofuri, your grandfather picked Taikokajin over me because she was the only pup of his favorite wife. Lady Taikokajin and I had different mothers. My daughters are more than distant enough for a marriage to be conceivable."

The new information had shocked both Tsukiyume and Shimofuri. They stared almost uncomprehendingly at their uncle, flabbergasted.

But Sasugainu wasn't finished yet. "I propose that Amagumori as the firstborn become your wife, Nephew. She will be a dutiful wife and give you the sons Hokinsha never gave me." he chuckled once, but without bitterness. In fact his green eyes seemed to dance with glee.

His eldest daughter was crying softly, her shoulders shaking. Only the smell of tears and her gentle quivering gave away her tears. Even so Sasugainu turned and glared at her, but said nothing.

"Once you and Amagumori are married, Nephew, you can send Tsukiyume to stay here and act as your informant in the Hokubo, or she could stay in the Nanka if you wish while you stay here in the Hokubo. You will watch over my territory while I continue to protect the Itou from our cousins in the far north." Sasugainu frowned when he saw his niece and nephew stiffly sitting before him, silently disagreeing. "It is a perfect plan!"

"I will not be parted from my sister." Shimofuri announced, fiercely. Tsukiyume had been used as a hostage against him far too many times. Shimofuri kept her near now out of paranoia.

"It will not be for long, and she would always be free to come and go, Shimofuri." Sasugainu's tone had dropped, becoming placating. "She will not be a hostage. If she is here in the Hokubo she will be an honored guest, the sister-in-law and my new daughter."

Tsukiyume was trembling near Shimofuri, her white dog ears flattened on her flowing black hair. "Uncle, please…" her tone was begging. Her eyes searched over her cousins, who she'd never seen before that she could remember, but she was filled with empathy for their situation. Their uncle was mad with his wife's loss, that could be the only explanation.

"She could stay in the Nanke, Shimofuri. You would stay here in the Hokubo with Amagumori and make the Nanka's heirs."

Shimofuri shook his head. "Uncle, you are young, you may remarry. If you give Lady Amagumori to me in marriage then our children would become _your_ heirs too. Surely there is another way for you to—"

Sasugainu laughed once, short and harshly. "Don't imagine Nephew that I'm giving you my daughter so that you can make _my_ heirs through her. Nonsense! Of course I will marry again, I will have sons the same age as your sons. It will be a blessed time."

"Father!" Soeki shrieked behind him, her face was bright red, her eyes clouded with angry tears.

"Shush!" Sasugainu snarled. "You'll get your turn but I'd never burden Shimofuri with _you_ pest."

"You can't do—"

"Amagumori!" Sasugainu shouted, peeking at her over his shoulder. When his eldest daughter looked up, exposing her tear-streaked face, he scowled and ordered, "Take Soeki out of here, now!"

Obediently Amagumori got to her feet and crossed behind her father, grabbing her sister's shoulder. Soeki growled like a dog as she followed Amagumori out of the room. The sisters disappeared and the door closed behind them.

"So," Sasugainu crowed, "What do you say?"

Shimofuri's lips were pursed tightly; Tsukiyume meanwhile stared at the floor. At last Shimofuri spoke, quietly. "Have the plans drawn up, Uncle. I will return to the Nanka to leave Tsukiyume there. When she is safe I shall return to you to discuss this further."

Sasugainu beamed and clapped his hands. "Excellent! Scribe! Get in here now!"

* * *

A/N: all of this had a purpose, which will be revealed later, I assure you. For those of you, hopefully all of you, who've read _Runaway_ and the other stories in this universe if you will, consider the epilogue of _Runaway._ In that chapter Shimofuri was faced with marriage to Yamome and he had a dream where a goddess spoke to him as well…so, what's going on with that? 


	2. Sisters

A/N: Finally! The ball is up and rolling! YES! New semester now. New English classes. Writing, writing, writing. Cold weather. Writing my novel and this story….wooot. Notes about marriages—as far as I know the Japanese were probably okay with marrying a cousin. Amagumori and Shimofuri are far enough apart that their children won't have webbed feet and shouldn't be mentally deficient in some way. At least I don't think so. In Lian Hearn's _Harsh Cry of the Heron_ one leader plans to marry one of his daughters to the son of his wife's younger sister. So in that case he thought it perfectly right and normal to marry off his daughter to his nephew. Also, ironically like Sasugainu, his daughter and his nephew were related through their fathers as well as their mothers, though it was more distantly there. Anyway, so Sasugainu's suggestion isn't that strange, but Shimofuri doesn't like to do anything he disagrees with and so soon after their aunt's death…anyway…onward ho!

Disclaimer: I do not own Sesshomaru.

Last chapter: the prologue, Rin dreamed of the goddess Koeru, a goddess worshipped by humans in the north. She asked Sesshomaru to bring his wife Ginrei and her daughter Hanone from the Isei province and the Naishougoto palace. Shimofuri, ruler of the Middle Lands, went to console his uncle Sasugainu who has just lost his wife Hokinsha. Sasugainu (in madness? In grief?) suggested that Shimofuri be married to his oldest daughter Amagumori. Amagumori and Shimofuri are cousins, albeit once or twice removed; no one likes the idea except Sasugainu.

* * *

**Sisters **

Naked, Saya raced through the hallways at Jouka, squealing. Her bright hair looked like fresh snow even when it was dripping and wet. The purple crescent moon in her forehead stood out starkly in her pale flesh. Rin and a maid followed the screaming child, hurrying after her. The maid held a large swathe of fabric that she would use as a towel and Rin carried Saya's robes.

The girl reached Jouka's small audience room. The door had been left partially ajar. A servant was knelt in the doorway, his head ducked low. A tray of tea sat outside the audience room as well, waiting to be served when the time came. As the screaming Saya reached the audience room the kneeling servant's face blanched and his mouth fell open.

Saya collided with him clumsily, trying to climb over him. The man ducked and tried to get out of her way. He made no attempt to stop her, in fact he lifted his hands high in the air, as if she was toxic and touching her would bring certain death. Considering whose daughter she was it was probably a smart move. Saya slipped into the empty audience room and stopped, gazing around it with her amber eyes wide.

"Father?" she asked the empty room, the golden screens and paintings of birds, flowers, and bamboo.

Rin entered the room with the maid trailing close behind. "Saya!" she shouted, breathing fast from their romp all over the Jouka palace. The little girl twisted around to peer back at her mother. She smiled, revealing a full set of human teeth. The elongated canines of the inuyoukai hadn't come in her baby teeth. Like Saya's ears, which were perfect, rounded and utterly human, it was possible she would never have the canines. Her fingertips were clawed, however, of that there was no doubt. To escape from her bath Saya had clawed the maid's arm just enough for it to hurt and then she'd bolted.

"Mama?" Saya quirked her head to one side, innocently.

"Get over here." Rin strode forward and wrapped Saya in a blue robe. When Saya stood still to be dressed, Rin knelt and tied a white sash around her daughter's stomach.

"You said Father was home." Saya pouted. Like her father Saya wasn't frowning or sticking out her lower lip. The girl's face was straight and calm, only her eyes revealed the pout that Rin could hear in her little daughter's voice. "Father and my sister. You said my sister would be coming, Mama."

"She's coming—that's why you need to be dressed! What would your father think if you came in here naked? And if Jaken-sama had seen you without even a stitch of clothing it would probably kill him. You have to be a lady, Saya. You're Lord Sesshomaru's daughter." Rin had thrown this speech at her daughter many times before. It was one of her worst fears that Saya would prove that hanyou were wild creatures. She worried that Saya would act more like Inuyasha as she grew and that similarity would make Sesshomaru despise his hanyou daughter.

The maid stepped forward stiffly and offered Rin the rest of Saya's robes. A child's kimono, yellow with purple flowers on the long, flowing sleeves. Rin wrapped it around Saya's shoulders and tied the obi at her waist in an elaborate, childish bow. She shepherded Saya toward the maid, "Go with her and sit like a good girl while she combs your hair, Saya."

Sighing almost theatrically, Saya left with the maid obediently and disappeared from the audience room. The servant that had scrambled to get out of Saya's way now laughed tensely. "There are days that I am happy I have no children, my lady."

Rin frowned at him briefly and then asked, "Is Lord Sesshomaru here?"

The man nodded. "I believe he's in his dressing room."

"And where is Lady Ginrei?" Rin demanded, her voice growing slightly shriller.

The man opened his mouth to respond but cut himself short when the aforementioned woman stepped through the doorway. Ginrei was an elegant inuyoukai. Uncannily, though she wasn't related to Sesshomaru at all, she was fair haired as he was, except that while Sesshomaru's hair tended to be white like fallen snow, Ginrei's was silvered. Her eyes were an icy silver. The markings on her cheeks were bright white, one under each eye. Although she had just made a long journey from Naishougoto in the Middle Lands to Jouka in the mountains of the Western Lands, Ginrei was still beautiful with every hair on her head in perfect place. She wore her hair long down her back.

The two women, one human and the other inuyoukai, stared at each other for a long moment before Rin bowed slightly, acknowledging Ginrei's status as a wife. She didn't speak. It had been some time since she'd seen Ginrei. She'd forgotten how hard it was to regard the other woman and imagine Sesshomaru lying with her or pressing his body against hers. Had Ginrei cried out with joy? Had she been afraid?

Blinking fiercely for a moment, Rin banished those thoughts as Ginrei returned her bow deeply. "Lady Rin." She greeted her, smilingly. For the first time Rin saw that Ginrei was carrying her daughter Hanone with her. Hanone clung to her mother's waist, her eyes, which were silver-blue like Ginrei's, were wide with awe.

Unlike Saya, who was running around like a five year old on confident, strong and nimble legs, Hanone was slow to grow and mature. Her face as well as what Rin could see of Hanone's legs peeking out through her robes, told her that she had the proportions of a baby still. It was unlikely that she could walk very well.

Burying her interest in the baby, her daughter's younger half-sister, Rin smiled at Ginrei, trying to force warmth into the expression. "How was your journey? You must be tired."

Ginrei moved across the little audience room and sat on the floor. She lowered Hanone into her lap and smoothed her daughter's white hair. The same color as Saya and Sesshomaru. "Actually I found the travel a refreshing change." Ginrei replied cheerfully, without looking up at Rin as she spoke. Her fingers were busy worming their way through Hanone's white mane.

Rin, still standing awkwardly, stared at the other mother and daughter unabashedly and without trying to hide it. Ginrei wasn't as arrestingly beautiful as Rin, but the two women were almost the same tiny height. Rin was tall for a mortal woman, Ginrei short for an inuyoukai. Sesshomaru dwarfed both of them.

At last, decisively, Rin crossed to where Ginrei was seated and dropped into a sitting position, smoothing her robes around her delicately, as if she were posing for a photo. In reality it was a stall tactic to avoid further staring at Ginrei. "How has the weather been? Did you run into snow coming through the passes?"

"No," Ginrei shook her head, "Spring has come for the most part. It's very warm in the Isei."

Rin's fingers halted over a persistent wrinkle in her kimono. Her face twisted briefly with a frown, a mix of feelings that Ginrei, a few scant feet away, was unable to interpret. The expression vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, and just as mysteriously. "That's good to hear. I was waiting for the snow to melt. I wanted to start teaching Saya how to ride."

Ginrei's silvered eyes shot open wide. "Ride? What do you mean _ride?_"

"Horseback riding." Rin answered curtly, almost impatiently.

"She is hanyou, my lady." Ginrei's gaze searched over Rin's face, as if looking for a declaration of insanity or perhaps the return of coherent thought. "The horse will spook at her scent."

Rin smiled tightly. "I have seen hanyou ride horses before. We have a horse that was raised here at Jouka and she does not spook when I take Saya out to the stables."

Ginrei's stiffness and the way she gripped Hanone with both hands, as if afraid that Rin would reach out and take the child away, revealed her continuing uncertainty. Nevertheless she nodded and offered Rin a small bow. "I wish you luck, Lady Rin."

"And how is young Lady Hanone?" Rin asked, at last allowing the conversation to slide into something they were both relatively comfortable with.

Hearing her name, Hanone's head whipped around and she peered at Rin with wide, round and unblinking eyes. She was a sponge, absorbing every new sight, sound, taste, scent, and touch of the new world around her. She'd never been outside of Naishougoto before; to her everything was fresh and new.

Ginrei ran her clawed fingers through Hanone's hair. "Hanone," she called in a cooing voice, "This is Lady Rin, can you greet her properly the way I taught you?"

On cue, performing much like a dog, Hanone squirmed in her mother's lap and settled on the floor directly in front of Rin. The tiny girl folded over in a bow. Her white hair spilled luxuriously over her shoulders, fluffy and as fine as silk. If Saya had performed the same movement her hair, coarser than Hanone's, would've found a way to frizz or tangle more as a human child's might.

Rin found herself fighting the tense, tight smile on her face, caught between her conflicting emotions, her expression quivered.

"Lady Rin," the inuyoukai girl chanted her words with her lips almost pressed against the hardwood floor. "Hanone pledges to serve and obey loyally."

"Rin accepts your offer." Rin answered in monotone, reciting the ritualistic response without thought.

Before Hanone could launch into a flowery, formal speech proclaiming her joy at Rin's acceptance, the servant knelt in the doorway called out, announcing Sesshomaru's arrival. Immediately after that proclamation the servant also shouted Saya's name. Hanone peeked up from her spot on the floor as Rin and Ginrei bowed to acknowledge Sesshomaru's arrival. He was husband to one, mate to the other, and father to two.

Sesshomaru settled in a more distant position, aloofly. Saya followed close at his heels and, as she was accustomed to doing so at informal gatherings, she sat on Sesshomaru's right, as close as a shadow. Although Sesshomaru hadn't ever encouraged this behavior that Rin had seen, he didn't push Saya away or order her to sit elsewhere. Like Rin, Saya was fast learning how to interpret his moods from the few, tiny hints he gave in body stance, expression, and voice. It was likely that if Sesshomaru didn't want her to sit next to him, she would sense it in advance without the need for the spoken word.

Uncertain of her place, Hanone was caught crouched in a half-bow, her silvered eyes wide and frightened now. Unlike Saya who saw Sesshomaru on a nearly daily basis, Hanone considered her mysterious father as a sort of legend. There could be no doubt that he was her father, even as a small child her sense of smell was formidable and she could detect the familiarity and shared scents between herself and Sesshomaru. But that foreknowledge couldn't change the stony face she saw, the high proud cheeks, the stern, cold eyes.

Ginrei helped her at last, making a small noise and gesturing at her daughter. Hanone crawled across the floor to huddle, protected and sheltered, on Ginrei's lap. She would've happily stayed there, observing the new world around her from the safety and protection of her mother's lap, if Sesshomaru hadn't suddenly turned his attention to her after the initial pleasantries in the odd family were exchanged. The lord of the Western Lands stared at Ginrei and then called, "Hanone."

The inuyoukai girl peeked out between Ginrei's arms and blinked. She was like a frightened fawn, newborn and weak. Although she could speak—she was three and a half years old—and Ginrei had begun to train her in the proper etiquette that would guide her through her long years living among rich, royal inuyoukai, Hanone had no words for Sesshomaru. The sight of him left her silent with her awe.

Ginrei answered for her silent daughter. "What does my lord wish of her?"

Sesshomaru lifted his gaze to Ginrei's and his golden eyes narrowed. His mouth quirked downward. "You are not to shelter her, Ginrei. She is not an infant."

Blinkingly, Ginrei bowed, it was an awkward motion with Hanone still perched in her lap.

"Hanone," Sesshomaru called once more, addressing her directly in a stiff, strong voice. "Sit beside Saya."

There was a long, agonizing moment when it seemed that Hanone wouldn't do as she was told. Then, finally, Hanone crawled out of her mother's lap and rose to her full height. She was a full head shorter than Saya, though she was only a few months younger. Her body was round with baby fat, her legs not completely straight yet. When she walked it was slowly and without grace. Slowly Hanone moved past her father and sat a foot from Saya's side. She began to sniffle fiercely as she settled and this sound made both Saya and Sesshomaru glance at her.

Sesshomaru's face flickered with annoyance. "Do not cry." He ordered her.

"Lord Sesshomaru…" Ginrei cried out, her voice high with an almost pleading tone. When Sesshomaru leveled his hawk-like gaze at her, Ginrei felt prostrate in a deep bow, as much to offer an apology and respect as much as it was an attempt to avoid his penetrating eyes. "Hanone is still very young…"

"She is old enough." Sesshomaru replied swiftly. "You have coddled her." his lips thinned and his cheeks pinked slightly as he added, "Your scent is filled with milk."

Rin felt a wave of heat and cold pass through her body. Ginre was still nursing Hanone—she could not be fertile! But Sesshomaru was forcing Ginrei to stop her overprotective, over-nurturing behavior. Without a suckling child Ginrei's milk would dry up, as Rin's own had long since done so, and her body would become fertile again. The endless cycles of fertility and menstruation would start all over again.

The voice from her eerie dream returned, whispering in her ears: _I am Life; I am the seeds planted in the field, the sunlight on the water. I am the earth. You may call me Koeru._

Rin scowled and wrung her hands tightly in her lap, restless.

"My lord." Ginrei relented, swallowing thickly and bowing. When she rose out of the bow, Rin caught the shine of tears in her silvered eyes.

_If she'd stayed in Naishougoto,_ Rin thought bitterly, _she would nurse Hanone as long as she wanted to. Bringing her here was a mistake._

* * *

At dinner that night, a few days after Hokinsha's body had been cremated, but before the ashes were scattered or buried, Sasugainu ordered the chef to mix a sleeping concoction and sprinkle it into his daughters' tea. He paid the chef a hefty amount to buy his loyalty as well as the deed. He was not in the room when his daughters drank the laced, impure tea. He didn't see the way they frowned and complained at the taste. He had only the money to assure himself that the chef had done his job correctly…

Until he wandered into the women's quarters late at night and slid open the door to his daughters' massive chambers. There were two futons, each three times the size of what one girl would need. Once the room had held three futons each three sizes too large for its occupant. Now it held only Amagumori and Soeki's futons.

Now that Hokinsha was finally, at long last, dead.

The maids had swept through and blown out the candles, removed the lamps earlier. They had no doubt thought that the sight of the two girls slumped over their nightly snacks and tea was a strange thing indeed, but dutifully they'd put their mistresses to bed after making sure each girl was merely sleeping. Perhaps they thought that the girls had drunk sake in mourning over their mother's death. Perhaps they knew that something odd was going on. Whatever the servants thought, Sasugainu didn't care.

Moving slowly, quietly, like a thief, Sasugainu moved to where the girls had erected a small alter in the farthest corner of their chambers. The ceramic pot where Hokinsha's ashes were kept stood in the alter, gleaming faintly in the light from the hallway. Sasugainu paused a moment to squint at the characters that his daughters had inscribed around the alter and had written on little notes of rice paper as prayers to their mother's spirit. Curiosity made Sasugainu snatch one of the notes up and pocket it before he turned his attention back to Hokinsha's ashes.

Sasugainu took the pot with both clawed hands and lifted it away from the alter. It wasn't a massive pot thankfully, though it was rather heavy. Sasugainu moved the pot to the closest futon and set it down beside the bed. Leaning over his sleeping daughter, the oldest Amagumori, Sasugainu scowled.

Amagumori was not as pretty as Soeki, but she would make a fine, obedient wife to Shimofuri, if only Sasugainu could convince his nephew to accept the marriage. In many ways Sasugainu would've liked to have given Shimofuri Soeki, simply because she was the smarter of his daughters and the most troublesome and meddling. Amagumori was the firstborn however; it made sense for him to offer her rather than Soeki. Besides, Soeki would indeed have her turn soon enough.

Sasugainu reached into his daughter's covers and pulled her limp, drugged body closer. The girl moaned weakly, her eyes came partially open. Sasugainu ignored the shine of her eyeballs. In the morning she would think this had been a bizarre dream, nothing more. Sasugainu pulled on one strand of his daughter's white hair, identical to his own, and whipped his clawed fingers against the strand, cutting it free of his daughter's head. She had so much hair she wouldn't notice or miss the strand he'd relieved her of. Sasugainu pulled the lid free of Hokinsha's ceramic urn and pushed Amagumori's hair into the jar.

A moment later he brought the urn to Soeki's bedside and did the same. Soeki's hair was blue-black, a rich luxuriant color that Shimofuri and Hokinsha had shared. Once upon a time, when Sasugainu had been a young, hot blooded creature, rather than the conniving, cowardly clown he was now, the blue-black of Hokinsha's hair had intoxicated him, filling him with desire. Now he detested the color, imagining that it was Hokinsha's influence on Soeki that made her pesky and clever and ever-resistant to his plans. It was Hokinsha's fault, of course, that he had no sons. She had given him daughters, useless girls instead. She had fouled his nest.

It didn't matter; soon he would have a new wife, a wife as young as his own daughters.

A wife that was currently in the possession of another inuyoukai.

Sasugainu pushed Soeki's strand of hair into the urn and then slipped out of the room, sliding the door closed behind him. He traveled through the dark castle until he slipped out into the gardens and, between the rows of decorative cherry and maple trees, he set down the urn and began to dig with his bare hands. When the hole was large enough to accommodate the contents of the urn, Sasugainu poured the ashes of his longtime wife inside the hole, along with the strands of hair he'd collected from his daughter. Then he smashed the ceramic urn itself and placed the pieces inside, arranging the shards into a few characters, spelling out the name he needed…

He buried the contents and packed the earth in deep. Tomorrow, when his girls awoke and screamed that their mother's ashes had been stolen, there would be no evidence of the urn or of the ashes. A garden worker could dig up the spot where the dirt in the garden was disturbed, but he would find nothing. No trace of the shattered urn arranged in the shape of a name, no ashes, and no strands of blue-black and white hair.

As Sasugainu walked back toward his castle he remembered the note he'd pillaged from his daughters' room, the note-prayers the girls had left around their mother's ashes. Curiously, Sasugainu picked out the letter from where he'd hidden it inside his robes and, as he passed near a lamp lighting the garden path, strained his eyes trying to read it.

_Stop our father,_ the note read, _he has lost his mind._

Hokinsha would not be answering any of their daughters' prayers, Sasugainu thought, crumpling the note and tossing it aside. He stomped his foot on it, pushing it into the dirt. He wasn't insane. That much he knew for sure. By the time his daughters' realized what was happening, it would be too late.

* * *

After her daily lessons in reading and writing, Saya was usually rewarded with a trip outside. Sometimes Rin escorted her with Sesshomaru, but on most days Jaken accompanied her while Rin watched from Jouka's terraced entryway. On the day when Sesshomaru returned with Ginrei and Hanone, Saya was able to skip her lesson and join Jaken to play in the crusted snow.

With one exception: now Jaken had two wards. Saya was accompanied by the sister she couldn't remember having seen before. Yet she knew by scent that Hanone was her sister, just as she knew Sesshomaru was her father and that spring would come steadily with the passage of each day.

While the adults waited on the steps of Jouka, Saya rushed out into the world. She screeched with every ounce that her lungs could muster, roaring like the powerful beast she imagined herself to be. She crested a hill of heaped snow and perched atop it on all fours. Her short, child's kimono pulled wide around her spread thighs. Children were never known for being cautious about flashing underwear or genitalia.

She grinned down at Jaken as he toddled forward, already huffing. Saya was fleet-footed even as a toddler. Her smile was human; there were no elongated canines to hint at her inuyoukai heritage.

Jaken paused to look up at her and his huge eyes bugged out more at her exposed underpants. Indignantly he huffed and shouted at her. "Saya! You foolish girl! Get down from there! Lord Sesshomaru will be most displeased!" he covered his eyes when he spoke. His cheeks flamed red as he stammered, trying to find a way to politely insist that she close her little legs. She was too innocent, too young to understand nakedness taboos.

Saya ignored Jaken, as was normal, and looked around the base of her ice mountains, searching for Hanone. She'd seen Hanone leave Jouka and enter the field just as she had, following Sesshomaru's orders. She'd expected a sort of telepathic bond with her sister, thinking that Hanone should know that Saya planned to scale the ice mountain, claiming it as her territory, and then "defend" it from Jaken.

Hanone was absolutely not following that well-established plan. Instead she was still near Jouka, squatted awkwardly on the ground, trying not to sit in the cold, wet mud and grass, refusing to get her backsides dirty.

"You foolish girl!" Jaken shouted, rushing forward gruntingly, ready to scale the ice mountain after her. The alternative, that Saya might fall and hurt herself, was unthinkable on multiple levels. Firstly, Saya was Sesshomaru's offspring, more precious than Rin in Jaken's eyes because she was a part of Sesshomaru, a broken off piece, a budding or a fallen leaf. Secondly, if she were to hurt herself Jaken would be the one that was punished as the babysitter.

Saya ignored him and half-hopped, half-rolled down the mound of crusted snow. She plopped in the mud at Jaken's side, splattering him with slush, old leaves, and gray-brown grass. The toad blinked and cried out his alarm, swatting at his face viciously to clear away the mess. By the time he'd wiped his eyes clean Saya was across the long stretch of field, knelt at Hanone's side. Unlike her younger, pureblooded sister, Saya sat unashamedly on the ground and dirtied her kimono.

"Aren't you going to climb with me?" Saya demanded, poking her sister in ribs gently with one clawed finger.

Hanone whimpered and batted at Saya's hand. Her silvered eyes clouded at once with tears that spilled out onto her cheeks and coursed down them as if in a race. She didn't try to hide these tears; she was too young to understand the stigmas of weakness and emotion.

Saya wrinkled her nose and drew back slightly, as if Hanone had struck her. The stink of her sister's salty tears repelled her, filling her with a strange tightness in her chest. "Stop it!"

Hanone whimpered loudly and turned away from Saya, searching behind them for any sign of Ginrei. Sesshomaru, Rin, and Ginrei were on the steps, watching their girls and Jaken, taking in the earliest tastes of the spring air. Rin was closest, gazing avidly at the exchange between the two girls. Sesshomaru and Ginrei were removed from it, standing close to one another behind Rin. This closeness was not a friendly one, merely a strategic move on Sesshomaru's part to keep Ginrei away from Hanone, to force the mother to let go of her coddled daughter.

Whether anyone admitted or not, they were all eager to see how Hanone and Saya would react to one another. Was it natural for the siblings to hate one another, as Sesshomaru and Inuyasha did, or was the normal state of things more along what Shimofuri and his hanyou sister Tsukiyume shared? Was hatred the proper response? Would Hanone accept Saya? Would Saya accept Hanone? What would the days, months, seasons, and years bring for the sisters?

"Come on." Saya ordered, making her face into a fierce, forceful frown. "Climb with me." when Hanone didn't respond to this show immediately, Saya changed her approach by reaching out and touching her sister's silken, white hair. "You have pretty hair."

Saya's touch made Hanone stifle her sniffling crying for a moment to regard her older sister. Her wide, teary eyes stared, flickering with a mixture of interest and fear. Slowly her lips moved, curling over her mouthful of tiny, white teeth. "Who are you?"

"I'm Saya." She pulled on Hanone's sleeve, tugging the other girl off balance until she fell into the muddied grass. "You're Hanone. Mama told me so."

"Mama?" Hanone asked, her face wrinkling slowly with distaste as she lifted her hands and peered at the palms, seeing the cold, sticky mud there. She made a small noise of distress in her throat and twisted back to look at the steps where Ginrei was standing trapped by Sesshomaru. When mother and daughter's eyes met Ginrei took a step forward, as if to hurry out to Hanone to help her clean her palms and usher inside out of the chilly spring air. Sesshomaru pinned her with one quick gaze and Ginrei froze again, stuck where she was. The husband and wife glared at one another, Sesshomaru with the benign air of the irritated ruler, Ginrei with the embittered, beaten stare of the oppressed.

"Yeah, Mama." Saya answered, tugging on Hanone's sleeve yet again. Part of Hanone's kimono peeled away from her shoulder, showing the pallid, perfect flesh of her bare shoulder. "Come climb. Jaken-sama will yell."

Unsteadily Hanone let herself be pulled to her feet and then dragged as if she was blind toward the crusted heap of snow. The girls were odd sisters, oddly matching already. Unlike Shimofuri and Tsukiyume, they looked very much alike and they were the same gender. Yet, unlike Sesshomaru and Inuyasha, they were roughly the same age. Now, as they walked toward the grumbling toad Jaken, both girls had muddied the undersides of their thighs and their bottoms. The soles of their feet were black with slush.

What would fate have lying in store for them?

* * *

A/N: Yay! Another chapter down! 


	3. Fractured Family

A/N: Just a note because it struck me as I was sitting here, this story is named after a song by OK Go called "_Return"_ of course. I'm not entirely sure of the lyrics, but somehow I relate them to _Runaway _and this story too.

"_It's been years since your body went flat but even memories of that are off again dull, all gravel and glass, but who needs them now—displaced they're easily safe—the worst of it now: I can't remember your face. (Return x 3)_

_For a while with the vertigo cured we were alive we were pure, the void took the shape of all that you are, but the years take their toll and things get bent into shape. Antiseptic and tired I can't remember your face. (Return x 3)_

_You were supposed to grow old (2x). Reckless, unfrightened and old. You were supposed to grow old. _

_You were supposed to return. _

Anyway, I always felt a connection somewhere. That would be the saddest thing I could write, an old dying Sesshomaru with Rin long since gone, perhaps Saya too if he outlived them both. How tragic would it be not to remember a lover's, a wife's, or a child's face at the end? Terrible.

Last Chapter: Sesshomaru returned with Hanone and Ginrei and he ordered Ginrei to stop coddling Hanone, and especially to stop her from nursing. Sasugainu stole his dead wife's ashes and added clips of his daughters' hair into it, then buried it in the garden. Saya and Hanone timidly met one another.

* * *

**Fractured Family**

Sesshomaru instituted a daily regimen on his young daughters that forced them to be active and independent of their mothers. For Saya it was almost normal, for Hanone it was excruciating torture.

Each morning Saya and Hanone were bathed when they woke and dressed for the day. Their lessons began promptly after that. Saya had been learning to read and write for close to a year already. The lessons were repetitive and slow, emphasizing continuous practice to perfect the girls' handwriting and reading comprehension. Saya was quick and clever; her small hands were well-formed and dexterous. Hanone, meanwhile, had chubby fingers and hands, a thick brush was easily-maneuvered but a small one was hellishly difficult. The characters, symbols, new vocabulary words, and ideas that bombarded her daily were immediately overwhelming.

It didn't help that Sesshomaru himself tutored his own offspring. He was a ruthless teacher and, in spite of his well-established reputation as a warrior, he was just as much a scholar. Saya grinned throughout her lesson, always seeking Sesshomaru's praise if she could achieve it, like an overzealous puppy. Hanone cowered where she sat next to her older sister, cowed by her father's powerful presence and by the lack of her mother's protective body and touch.

Rin often sat in on the lessons, smiling proudly as Saya impressed Sesshomaru with her clever hands and brilliant, quick mind. Ginrei wasn't allowed the same privilege, Sesshomaru insisted that Hanone wouldn't learn anything if Ginrei were present in the same room. In spite of Ginrei's pleading, Sesshomaru arranged that Ginrei was engaged with studies of her own to keep her occupied.

Beyond the intellectual classes Hanone and Saya were tutored physically as well. They were too young to have much strength or endurance, but Daken, an old, grizzled inuyoukai that Sesshomaru had known all of his life, iterated the basics of self-defense and tried to teach the girls to use their senses to know the world around them. When Daken wasn't about to offer his services as a tutor this time was spent outside in the fields and the gardens around Jouka. Jaken watched over them, shepherding the girls like a sheepdog, barking at them when they wandered off.

Saya was unmistakably the older, stronger child. She was hanyou, but Rin beamed more each day as she saw how far behind Hanone was in development. Of course it was impossible for her to know the growth differences between youkai and human. Hanone aged as a pureblooded inuyoukai was meant to, and Saya matured out of babyhood faster than Hanone as if her body understood that as a mutt of mixed blood she would need to stand out and be strong to stay alive.

Sesshomaru's hard, almost cruel treatment of Hanone was borne of ignorance. Without pureblooded younger siblings, and stranded from the dog demon clan, Sesshomaru had nothing to compare his daughters to. He saw Saya grow and develop by leaps and bounds and then found that Hanone was still small, uncomplicated, and babyish. It was natural for him to push the underachiever.

Ginrei suffered at a distance, watching as Hanone was taken from her. As the air began to warm and the last of the old, crusted snow melted and sank into the earth, Ginrei joined Rin on an open terrace of the palace and watched stiffly while Jaken played the reluctant babysitter in the field. The grass was beginning to green and thicken, unfurling its blades toward the sunlight. Normally Ginrei stood silent and bitter several feet away from Rin while she watched Hanone in the distance, but today she moved unannounced and sat so close to Rin that their shoulders and thighs touched.

Uncomfortably, Rin scooted away from the inuyoukai woman and worked very hard not to look at her. She focused her eyes on the lesson taking place before her, the old grizzled Daken playfully chasing Saya and Hanone, trying to teach them how to evade a pursuer. The exercise had fast degraded into a game of tag.

As Saya ran in a circle around Hanone, lunging forward as if to tag her and then withdrawing before touching her, Ginrei heaved a long, heavy sigh. "Sesshomaru has taken her from me."

Rin peeked at Ginrei using her rather poor peripheral vision. She only succeeded in giving herself a headache. She blinked and stared forward again. Hesitantly, she cleared her throat and asked, "He has named Hanone his heir…?"

Ginrei sniffed, cutting off a bitter laugh before it had fully formed. "No, I would never agree to it." slowly, Ginrei continued as her hands twisted on themselves nervously in her lap. "Lady Rin, I had hoped that you could speak on my behalf to Lord Sesshomaru…"

A moment ago Ginrei had forgotten the proper title and respect that she should've afforded to her husband, now she was using careful, flattering language filled to the brim with respect. She was pleading.

Rin pursed her lips, considering Ginrei's position for a moment, examining the way it related back to her own place. At last she nodded and turned to smile widely at Ginrei. "I will do as you ask." It was better for Rin to act as an emissary between them; she would know what was happening between the couple that way. It gave Rin a position of power that her title, as mere mate and not the pureblooded inuyoukai wife she longed to be, denied her. "What do you want me to speak with him about?"

Ginrei's hands moved in her lap, wrapping and wringing on one another. "I request that he allow me to return to Naishougoto with Hanone. She isn't happy here," Ginrei swallowed quickly and stammered slightly, "And he is breaking his promise to me—Hanone is my heir…!" she cut herself off, dropping her eyes to the ground. Her lips quivered.

Out in the field Hanone shrieked with laughter, drawing both mothers into watching alertly. Saya had pounced on her younger sister, digging her fingers into Hanone's ribs and tickling her. In that moment Hanone was anything but an unhappy child. It was true that she often fussed and cried in her lessons, but when she was left to her own devices with Saya they were peaceable and happy playmates.

Rin fought the frown that was trying to sneak onto her lips, to cross over her face, clouding it. She didn't want Ginrei to see it and lose her nerve because of it. Although she disagreed with Ginrei, believing that Hanone shouldn't be sheltered and should be raised to know Sesshomaru and Saya too, Rin didn't engage in a dispute, she wanted to see Ginrei's unrest, her negative emotions. Ginrei saw Hanone each night during dinner and she shared a futon with her daughter. It wasn't as though Sesshomaru had forbidden mother and daughter from interacting. If Ginrei had desired, she might run out into the field that very moment to play with both girls. As soon as she accepted Sesshomaru's decision on how Hanone would be raised, the sooner Ginrei would be allowed to begin teaching Hanone herself and sitting in on the lessons that she herself didn't instruct.

But Rin didn't want Ginrei to accept it; she wanted the dispute, the tension.

But just as she was naïve to the growing patterns of pureblooded inuyoukai versus the inuhanyou, Rin was also unaware of an underlying cause of that tension. She didn't know that it was through strife that Hanone had been conceived.

"I understand." Rin murmured, nodding in a concerned, placating way. "I'll speak to Lord Sesshomaru at the soonest possible moment."

Ginrei bowed. "Thank you, Lady Rin." She addressed the other woman formally, and the tension didn't fall away from her shoulders…was that significant?

Rin turned her attention forcibly back to their daughters, rushing about through the field, laughing in the sudden joy of having a sister, a playmate unlike any other.

* * *

The passage of two weeks was enough to bring about the change. With his exquisite sense of smell, Sesshomaru was privy to the abrupt shift in Ginrei's hormones as her body ceased lactation. He'd scented the transition in Rin two and a half years ago when she'd stopped nursing Saya, but for Rin the change was far less dramatic. Human females could be fertile even while nursing. Their bodies were programmed for swift reproduction, like rats. They had about thirty years, maybe less, to pass on their genes and raise as many offspring as possible in a dangerous world. They could produce only one child every few years…

Rin had become fertile again when Saya was only a few months old, but she had not yet conceived, a perplexing truth. Was it possible that hanyou pups inspired barrenness in their mothers?

He gave it little thought—until Rin requested Ginrei and Hanone be brought to Jouka. The motion was for Hanone and Saya, to make sure the girls were raised knowing that they were sisters, even possibly loving one another. Disturbingly it brought Ginrei close to him once more and Sesshomaru found that when Hanone was weaned by his own command, a trap—one devised by himself—had been laid.

Ginrei's rising fertility inspired excess energy in his limbs and a thirst for violence. It did the same to her as the hormones changed and worked their ancient tricks over her body. In the presence of her husband's own pheromones, a vicious mating ritual was fueled. Though there was little or no affection between them, their bodies hungered.

Avoidance was his preferred strategy for dealing with the issue. Sesshomaru took on unnecessary excursions and unexpected visits to other fortresses and castles. He sought out troublesome demons within the Western Lands and slaughtered them with no provocation. The human populace appreciated such actions and praised him without ever understanding that his true motive was not to help _them_ but rather _himself _with the activity. The slow crawl of the seasons and the steady passage of the days and nights calmed Sesshomaru until he could return to Jouka again and see Rin and his daughters.

A little more than a month after Ginrei's scent changed, Sesshomaru found himself caught within Jouka's walls, hidden away inside his bedchamber, watching Rin hungrily as she brought forth Ginrei's request. Rin was as beautiful as always, her long black hair shining and worn long. Her kimono was white with embroidered pink strands running through it. When she bowed and called his name quietly in her small, warm voice, Sesshomaru could already feel his loins warming and tightening. Her words interested him, but his mind was so steeped with unspent sexual urges that it was hard for him to even understand her.

"Lord Sesshomaru," Rin met his gaze directly as she spoke, and Sesshomaru returned the favor, though his eyes were narrowed carefully. "I have been asked by Lady Ginrei…" she stopped and her lips thinned with displeasure, "…your wife, that she be allowed to take Hanone and travel back to Naishougoto and the Isei."

"Does Rin desire this as well?" He fought the instinct inside to hold his breath with anticipation. If Rin had changed her mind then Sesshomaru could send Ginrei away, back to Naishougoto and the Isei, far out of scent range. He wouldn't even be required to escort her himself, he could send a retinue of guardian youkai—_not_ other inuyoukai but perhaps monkey demons, kitsune, or lynx if they cooperated. Sending other inuyoukai would simply drive the guardians into rutting over Ginrei like wild oxen.

Of course Ginrei would never leave without Hanone, and Sesshomaru was certain that she'd coddle the girl as soon as she had complete control over her. That was unacceptable.

"I…" Rin paused, her mouth hanging slightly ajar as she considered his question.

Sesshomaru watched her lips, his eyes narrowing. His hands clenched into tight fists in his lap briefly and then opened again, his fingers twitching. (A/N: spoiler warning? Someone told me that Sess grew his arm back somehow in the manga. I'm going with that now here though normally it is a lot of fun to make him one handed. It makes for all sorts of great weaknesses—someone has to dress him, food has to be on a certain side, Rin removing his armor for him for example…)

Rin started again, steadily this time. "Rin feels it would be a great shame for Hanone and Saya to be separated."

It wasn't hard for Sesshomaru to infer the deeper meaning in her words: Rin wanted Ginrei gone, but she wasn't willing to sacrifice Saya's happiness for her own.

He ducked his chin down once in a short nod. "Then she will remain here, as will Ginrei."

It would be difficult, but Sesshomaru was a creature of immense power and restraint. As long as Rin was there to help ease his sexual tension, and as long as he could retreat for weeks at a time, Sesshomaru would survive. Over time it was likely that Ginrei would regress into infertility again and the problem would cease completely.

In the meantime…

As Sesshomaru rose to his feet and took a step closer to his mate, Rin started speaking, continuing the topic. She wasn't ready for the conversation to end, though after the long years they'd shared together intimately Sesshomaru knew there was no way she'd missed the tiny but definite signs of his growing desire. Apparently what she had to say was pressingly important to her mind. He halted when he'd reached her and stood at her side, listening stiffly.

"Lady Ginrei confided that she feels Lord Sesshomaru has taken her child away from her unfairly. She feels that Lord Sesshomaru has breached a contract with her, involving Hanone's primary heritage."

The formal language made Sesshomaru's skin itch fitfully. Pretenses, rituals, and court etiquette, all of the silly games that laid over the surface of their lives, all of it was petty and frivolous. One massive waste of his time in that moment. He reached out and fingered Rin's hair, tugging on a few strands and making a small, deep sound in the back of his throat.

Like the intelligent, thoughtful beauty she was, Rin had remembered to shut the door after she'd entered his bedchambers. It was a good precaution. She never knew when stepping inside whether or not Sesshomaru would desire her physically. At times his sexual need was like an illness, arriving without warning and without a choice. She sat perfectly still when he touched her, though her eyes drifted closed, sated with contentment.

"What will Lord Sesshomaru tell Lady Ginrei about her daughter's future?" Rin asked in a slow, humming voice that had grown husky. "Will Lord Sesshomaru announce Hanone as his heir?"

Sesshomaru made one tiny grunt and sat down heavily at Rin's side. He was so close to her that their thighs touched, but he faced the closed door, the opposite direction from where Rin was staring. When she breathed and moved, Sesshomaru could feel the press of her body against his own. His own body reacted violently, springing to life, stretching and growing with unspent energy and sexual tension. He closed his eyes and let out a long, slow breath.

"Lord Sesshomaru?" Rin asked. Her voice had changed, becoming concerned now. She could read his behavior and she understood that he was having trouble controlling himself. A slow, cautious touch laid on his forearm, squeezing shyly. "Are you all right?"

Words had deserted him. A niggling, troubled part of his brain knew that Rin had brought something up about Hanone and Ginrei that he wanted to consider seriously, but that part of his mind was weak and easily overpowered by the carnal, animal need rising within.

Slowly, Sesshomaru snaked one arm around Rin's shoulders and drew her closer until her upper body was leaning completely against his own. She submitted to it, letting her body sag limply, trusting Sesshomaru to hold the extra weight. She let out a small but deep sigh when his clawed hands touched the bare skin of her neck and slipped beneath the fabric of her robes.

Then, abruptly, Sesshomaru lowered his head and, brushing her long, flowing hair out of the way, he bit her neck at the base of her collarbone. Rin tensed, her breath hitched with surprise as she inhaled. His fanged canines were bitterly sharp and only on a few rare occasions had Sesshomaru ever bitten her hard enough to bruise or break the skin. Now was one of those rare moments and Rin felt a thrill of alarm race through her.

Wet warmth was spilling over her shoulder, oozing sluggishly.

She made a small sound, tiny and high pitched, but Sesshomaru had not yet released her. His teeth were imbedded in her skin. The burning of the wound, the pressure on her flesh was mounting steadily. She whimpered and moved her hand, trying lightly to push him away. "Sesshomaru…"

He pulled away from her at last, slowly. Through the stinging, burning pain from his bite Rin was still able to see and hear the way her mate's shoulders heaved with his deep, powerful breathing. He hovered over the spot that he'd bitten for almost a full minute, as if contemplating biting her again. Rin could feel his hot breath pummeling the open, bleeding wound.

At last, stiffly, Sesshomaru pulled away from her. Rin gripped the wound immediately with a shaking hand. She pressed on it, trying to stem the blood flow. With the other hand she tugged on her kimono's collar, trying to peel it away from where the blood had oozed and spilled from the wound. It was already stained and rapidly absorbing the blood it'd come into contact with.

When Sesshomaru moved at her side, lifting his wrist to his mouth in a wiping motion, Rin watched him and tried to regain her shaken composure. There were tiny red filaments in Sesshomaru's eyes, a sign of his lost control. He stared down at his wrist after he'd pulled it from his lips. There was a smudge of bright red blood on the back of his hand.

It was on his lips too, encircling his mouth like lipstick, though it was smeared away on one side where he'd wiped at it.

The bizarre moment seemed to be frozen in time. Neither Rin or Sesshomaru moved for what felt like minutes but could've been only seconds. It was impossible to tell. At last Rin spoke his name, her voice thin and wavering. "Sesshomaru?"

The intimacy of his name, spoken without titles and without Rin's usual confidence, broke Sesshomaru's fixed stare. He glanced at Rin and took in her cringing expression, the red of blood peeking around the edges of the hand that was clasped over where he'd bitten her. To Sesshomaru it'd been nothing but a nibble of ecstasy. To taste her youth, her strength, and her femaleness in her blood was the closest, most intimate thing he could receive and give to his mate. If Rin had been a female inuyoukai she would've returned the same bite hungrily to taste his blood, his very essence.

But she was only human and humans were so frail and weak…in the face of his full animal passion Rin was not his equal, she was feeble.

"Forgive me," he asked her in a deep, husky voice. The heat in his groin hadn't faded, in fact it had intensified. Rin was not an inuyoukai woman, but she was his mate and the taste of her was satisfying nonetheless. He couldn't imagine her leaving, even after the bleeding bite. He needed her.

Yet, even as he spoke, Sesshomaru could feel the sticky ring of her blood around his lips, trying to dry and crust over. He lifted his wrist to his lips again and forcefully wiped at his mouth. With the motion he felt heat break over his face, the first sign of shame. Even shame couldn't dissipate his need for her, however. The tangy taste of her remained and, when Rin tentatively moved her hand to examine the wound, the fresh scent of her blood set Sesshomaru's heart into a fluttering spasm.

"Will you stay?" He caught her hand, coated in blood, and squeezed it fiercely.

"I…" she swallowed nervously and then nodded slowly. "I need a bandage…"

Sesshomaru turned his gaze away from her. His hands, sitting awkwardly on his thighs, were quivering convulsively. "Go then."

Rin bowed weakly and got to her feet, hurrying for the door. She slipped out of his chambers and slid the door closed after her. Jouka was a small palace, hidden away in some of the most mountainous parts of the Western Lands. This smallness allowed few maids and it meant that Rin's room was only a short walk down the hall from Sesshomaru's bedchambers.

When Rin entered her room she left the door standing open as she clumsily picked apart the bow on her obi and peeled her outer layer of robes away from the inner ones. Kneeling before the full length mirror, Rin exposed her shoulder completely and, with shaking hands and fingers, washed the fresh wound with water from a ceramic bowl. Her chin quivered as she worked, fighting the bite of the pain. When it was clean Rin found some cheap clean cotton, stored away in a hidden drawer, used by all the women living and working at Jouka palace to collect their monthly blood. She settled before the mirror again and, tentatively pulling her arm out of her robe sleeve, began to wrap the wound.

A step came by the door, floorboards creaked. Without looking to see who it was, Rin gave a harsh, sharp order. "Leave."

There was no answer, only silence from the door. Then, in the reflection of the mirror, Rin saw a wall of white as Sesshomaru appeared behind her. She inhaled sharply with surprise; her hands stopped their work wrapping her wound. "Lord Sesshomaru?" She called waveringly.

He fell to his knees behind her and took the bundle of cotton cloth in both hands. "Be still."

Rin nodded and watched his reflection, biting her lips as Sesshomaru delicately wove the cotton around her shoulder and her neck, covering the bite wound from all angles. Her heart beat furiously inside her chest; emotions struggled within her, though Rin found she had trouble determining what she was feeling. Was it fear? Desire? The tension stayed with her, making her shoulder stiff. The pain didn't help at all.

There were moments when Rin was reminded—harshly—of Sesshomaru's demonic nature. His power, his immortality, was overwhelming, but so was his restraint. Like the lioness of the African savannah that carries her cubs with the same teeth that kill her prey, Sesshomaru was capable of great gentleness. Yet sometimes he lost that control or behaved in a way that completely mystified Rin. His reasons were simple enough: he just was not _human._

There were other marks on her neck, spots where white scar tissue had covered over her otherwise smooth, honeyed skin. Sesshomaru had bitten her before. The lover of an inuyoukai risked injury with the carnal act.

Her body relaxed slowly as she accepted this truth and took comfort in Sesshomaru's return to gentleness as he wrapped the wound with meticulous precision. At last he tied the bandage off tightly and slashed the cotton with his tough claws. As he set the bundle of fabric aside, he spoke in a quiet voice. "Forgive me, Rin."

She smiled and closed her eyes. "Rin forgives you. You didn't mean it."

Sesshomaru moved from behind her, wrapping his arms around her as the sexual need reappeared, brought on by Rin's return to comfort. He _had_ meant it—he'd lost control, filled with the perverse desire to draw her blood and taste her. Even as his thoughts began to fizzle, distracted by the warmth of her skin, the steadiness of her breathing, and the clean, rich smell clinging to her skin, worry gnawed in his gut. _Control,_ he pushed the idea at himself, at his body desperately, _control._

It would be easy, too easy, for him to maul her, even kill her in his bloodlust…

* * *

As the weather warmed completely into spring the trees burst merrily into bloom. Their plump, round buds spilled open with flowers and fresh, timid green leaves. This botanical happiness was not mirrored in the animal world, however.

These particular gardens were situated in the newly rebuilt castle town of Sobadzue, in the Itou province of the Middle Lands. The cherry, plum, and maple trees were juvenile plants, small and petite. The trees that had stood in the garden a few years ago originally were massive elders. An enraged, vicious Sesshomaru had changed that. The castle had been torn down and the old ruler, Arasoizuki, lost his life. His wife and immature son still lived, sheltered away in the far north.

Now Sobadzue was looked after by Sasugainu, who supposedly held it in trust for Arasoizuki's young son.

The new spring day, with its fresh outburst of blossoms and leaves and a frail, fitful warmth, was meant for celebration. A variety of people, most of them youkai, had spilled into the gardens, dressed elaborately in thick robes for the occasion. As the temperature climbed they became slightly uncomfortable in their ceremonial garb, but few showed it. They were seated about the gardens in loose groups, sitting on mats to keep from staining their clothing.

It was a wedding—a betrothal anyway—an event that hadn't been seen in the Middle Lands for close to a decade.

Almost four years ago Shimofuri had been a part of a wedding of a different kind. Secret, invisible, and hurried. As a distant relative of the now-extinct Nishiyori clan—through his deceased father Haiseishoku—Shimofuri had been forced to be involved, acting as a representative. In that wedding the couple was Ginrei and Sesshomaru and neither had truly been interested in the affair. For Shimofuri it was a stain on his memory, a thing he would always recall when he glimpsed any kind of wedding ceremony.

Now he was forced to take part in this ceremony because it was his own.

His uncle was sitting closest to him and chattering at a scribe, a monkey youkai with white fur and black eyes. They were negotiating marriage terms and the dowry that Sasugainu would provide.

Tsukiyume, Shimofuri's half demon sister, acted as his scribe. Her ears swiveled as she listened to Sasugainu's dictation and recorded it for Shimofuri's own records. There was a silent, unspoken competition between Tsukiyume and the monkey youkai. Monkeys were frequently employed and trained as scribes because of their dexterous hands and keen intelligence, but they were often of an untrustworthy nature. Their clever minds could remember the dictations almost word for word and they could repeat it later to a spy for a little extra money on the side. To combat this humans were often employed as scribes instead. Unlike the monkeys, humans forgot what they wrote easily, and they were just as talented, but their hands and fingers might tire long before the monkey youkai's did.

As a hanyou, Tsukiyume embodied the perfect scribe. She was trustworthy, she was educated, she was as fast as the monkey, and her hands wouldn't tire as a mortal human's would. The monkey was feeling the pressure.

Shimofuri had ceased listening to Sasugainu's droning voice. If there was an issue he could read it in the way Tsukiyume's ears flattened down on top of her dark, black hair. Or he could watch Soeki's face deepen its furious frown. He might've tried to observe Amagumori, his intended bride _and_ first and second cousin, but she was hidden behind her father and she hadn't once glanced up during the proceedings.

"I will provide Amagumori's full wardrobe and several of my servants to care for her upon her marriage." Sasugainu was saying as he watched Shimofuri with his greenish eyes carefully. "Should she become ill I will employ the physician to spare you, my Nephew, from the expense." He paused and shifted on his matting for a moment before going on cautiously, "If she should die, however, within five years of her marriage to you I will hold you responsible and your holdings of the entirety of the Middle Lands through your heirs will revert to me…"

Tsukiyume's ears flattened against her black hair and Shimofuri blinked, coming out of his reverie. His gaze flicked to Soeki and the blanked, startled expression she wore explained clearly that he'd missed something stupendous. Raising his eyebrows high into his forehead, Shimofuri raised one finger toward his uncle. "Excuse me, Uncle…"

"Yes?" Sasugainu was calm, smiling slightly.

"Please, scribes, let us review what was just proposed."

"Don't consult them," Sasugainu snapped, "I'll repeat it for you, Nephew. If my daughter should die within five years of marrying you, I will hold you at fault. As punishment for her loss your lands will be passed to my side of the family, to my heirs."

From behind Sasugainu the proposed bride made a wet, slurping sound as she started to sob.

Without turning to look back at her, Sasugainu grunted out an order. "Shut up!"

Shimofuri began speaking cautiously. "Uncle, that is an unfair suggestion…"

"Hardly!" Sasugainu barked, almost laughing. "I know plainly that you don't want to marry Amagumori. Your mother didn't want to marry Haiseishoku either, but Nishiyori had his grubby fingers in that and forced her into the marriage. Haiseishoku ruled the Middle Lands then—but Taikokajin couldn't stand that. We all know she killed him after you were born."

Shimofuri felt the heat sweep over him, his breath caught in his throat. "You will not speak of _either_ of my sires in such a way!"

Sasugainu ignored Shimofuri, leaning forward with a small smirk on his face. "I see a lot of Taikokajin inside of you, Shimofuri. You are stubborn, you must do things only as _you_ want, only as _you_ see fit. It would not surprise me to see my lovely daughter die prematurely at your hands. I will not suffer such disrespect so lightly. I'm amazed that Nishiyori bore the loss of his cousin Haiseishoku as lightly as he did."

It was true that Shimofuri's mother had killed his father, becoming the sole ruler over the entirety of the Middle Lands. Shimofuri barely retained any memories of his father at all, a fact that haunted him. How was he to rule as a male when he had only his mother's influence throughout his puppyhood?

"Strike his words from the records." Shimofuri bit out, snarling.

"But it is only truth." Sasugainu grinned.

"It is a ridiculous argument." Shimofuri replied stiffly, "Lady Amagumori will come to no harm with me."

"I will not allow that condition to be stricken from the records." Sasugainu's expression had darkened, growing fierce and angry.

Shimofuri eyed his uncle suspiciously, forcing his face to return to an impassive, bland expression. When had Sasugainu become so power hungry? It was clear that Sasugainu cared nothing for his daughter—he might even poison her somehow to ensure that she died to fulfill the condition. If Amagumori died Shimofuri would lose his hold over the Middle Lands. He would hold a province, probably the Nanka, but he would no longer be the supreme overlord. Shimofuri had been born into the position, he hadn't earned it—but he wasn't about to allow himself to be swindled out of his birthright.

"If that is how you feel Uncle, I'm afraid I must decline this marriage."

For a long moment Sasugainu and Shimofuri stared one another down, neither flinching. Shimofuri had nothing to lose. He didn't care for the marriage; in fact he was disgusted by it. Amagumori was a fine specimen for marriage—but she was related to him. Sasugainu apparently had something massive to lose or gain in the condition and in the marriage, but just what Shimofuri didn't know.

At last Sasugainu sat back and sighed. His tense expression disappeared, changing into a grin. "I'm sorry, an old father's concern. Someday you will understand, Nephew. It is no easy task to pass off your oldest child. It will be even more difficult for me to lose Soeki."

Behind him Soeki spat out one word under her breath, _"Liar."_

Sasugainu ignored her. "Strike my condition from the record and make this change: Should Amagumori die within the first five years of her marriage to my nephew, Shimofuri will be punished with the clan's disdain. He will not be allowed, in the event of her death, to marry again but must remain unwed."

It was another death sentence to Shimofuri's birthright. If Shimofuri was unable to marry officially he could only take mates quietly. The offspring born to him then would be technically unable to inherit his land holdings. Shimofuri could name a child an heir but Sasugainu could challenge it and kill his child in a war for land.

Swiftly, Shimofuri spoke up, "Add this as well: should Lord Sasugainu be found treacherous in any way regarding the marriage or his holdings over the Itou and Hokubo, if he betrays his allies in battle or by way of exposing valuable information, he will be stripped of his land holdings and executed immediately."

Sasugainu's face bleached first white and then lit up with a brilliant, angry red. "What is the meaning of—!"

"I will not have it stricken from the record." Shimofuri interrupted, smiling darkly.

"You'll frame me!" Sasugainu shouted, outraged.

"I have every reason to be wary of you, Uncle. Do you not recall? Four years ago you betrayed me in fear when Lord Sesshomaru visited you with a vendetta against me. I cannot trust you."

Sasugainu opened his mouth and then closed it again, pinching the lips tightly into a thin white line. After a long moment he sighed loudly and waved his hand at the scribes. "That settles it. Fine, fine, fine. I just want this marriage over with!" he leaned forward and swatted the monkey youkai on the back of the head, "Are you finished?"

The monkey squawked nervously and blew on the ink before answering. "Yes!" he glared forward then at Tsukiyume, noting that she was already done as well.

"Choose a date." Sasugainu barked at his nephew.

With his shoulders sagging in defeat, Shimofuri drew in a long breath, "In one month's time, in the height of summer."

Sasugainu grinned and nodded, "Good! Then it is settled!"

* * *

Just in case we need some review for the inuyoukai clan dynamics I've made up (I keep extensive notes on it myself just to keep it straight! It's had two stories to develop and get very complex in)...

**Inutaisho** has a line through **Sess** and **IY **of course. Inutaisho was (distantly) related to the siblings **Taikokajin (Shimo's mom) **and** Sasugainu **through their father **Koshoshiro.** So through that **Shimofuri** is related to Sesshomaru and IY.

**Nishiyori** clan is extinct now, the leader was Nishiyori who was very old and had a lot of children and brothers. **Seiyo (Ginrei's father)** was one of his brothers and **unrelated to Sess**. **Shimofuri's father Haiseishoku** is from this extinct clan, and so was **Sasugainu's dead wife Hokinsha. **So through that Amagumori and Soeki are related to Shimofuri twice over.

**Arasoizuki **(dead also) was unrelated to all of them, from the north as was his wife, **Yamome. **

I think that's it...wow I'm sorry if that confuses anyone. Hopefully you can survive this with a general idea of it...ugh...


	4. The Language of life

A/N: I'm listening to Nickelback's _"Animals" _while writing this beginning part…ummm…if you've never heard that one before, basically the main chorus is: "No, we're never gonna quit, ain't nothing wrong with it, just acting like we're animals." Yes, good inspiration, no?

To an anonymous reviewer who expressed concerns and the dislike of Ginrei/Sess relations, it's okay! I'm not offended; I wish you had reviewed so that I could respond properly. Your opinion is definitely noted. You weren't ranting or any of the like, I'm not about to freak out. In fact if I could've answered you via the system on FFnet I would give you an answer that you'd find very comforting as far as my plans for this story go. I can't say more in this note because it'd spoil it for others and I like the ambiguity.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of them really…

Last Chapter: Shimofuri and his uncle discussed marriage terms. Sasugainu seemed intent on setting up a damning situation for Shimofuri. Sesshomaru and Ginrei and Hanone returned to Jouka where Saya and Rin were waiting. Rin began almost immediately to regret urging Sess to bring Ginrei into the same place as Sess imposed his belief of how Hanone should be raised, forcing Ginrei to wean Hanone before she felt her baby was ready. Ginrei isn't happy about it and she asked Rin to discuss it with Sess. When Rin brought it up with Sess he was more interested in relieving his uncontrollable sexual urges than in taking the problem seriously. He bit her and drew blood.

* * *

**The Language of Life**

Before leaving again, escaping the invisible hormonal fragrances that stalked him with every breath, Sesshomaru had to speak with Ginrei. Only two days had passed since he'd drawn blood out of Rin and throughout that time Sesshomaru had become nothing but a quivering mass of sexual desire.

His body had given itself over to the hysteria that Ginrei's fertility inspired. He couldn't sleep for long; instead his nights were spent sitting up next to Rin. Under normal circumstances Sesshomaru would leave Rin to sleep with Saya more often that he occupied her bed, but with his insatiable desire he preferred to keep her nearby. To scent her and listen to her breathing was enough to steady him and eliminate the possibility of going to Ginrei. When he lost himself in her body, for a short hour or two, his mind would clear and the desire would dissipate to tolerable levels.

But Rin fatigued easily. Soon he needed to leave, to give her a break, to make sure that he didn't find himself pinning Ginrei down instead, unable to distinguish between the two…

It had happened before. His body had taken over his mind in the past, influenced by the same hormones. That led to Hanone.

In the evening he met with all of his topsy-turvy family for a meal. Normally Sesshomaru ate very little and was more inclined to pass his meal to Saya, who was always ravenous and eager to accept it. Sharing Sesshomaru's meals was as good as a kiss or a hug to Saya. Like wolves, the pecking order and the sharing of food had great symbolic meaning. If Hanone had desired the same show of affection, she and Saya would've become rivals, but fortunately Hanone only ate with her mother.

Sesshomaru, Saya, and Jaken sat down first. While Jaken whined and muttered, prattling on about one thing or another in Saya and Sesshomaru's general directions, Sesshomaru and Saya steadily shoveled food down. Saya finished first and then waited, looking between Sesshomaru still eating slowly and Jaken's continued chattering.

When Ginrei entered carrying Hanone in her arms, Sesshomaru's gaze strayed to her and narrowed suspiciously. The slow but steady movement of his chopsticks from bowl to mouth came to a halt. The order of things inside his body had determined that sex came first, food second, and sanity very last.

Ginrei didn't return his stare, but her movement was stiff and her face twisted into a look of displeasure. She sat Hanone down beside her and smiled at her daughter when Hanone thanked the maids that served their food properly. Stroking Hanone's soft white hair as the little girl began to clumsily start eating, more with her fingers than with the chopsticks, Ginrei seemed completely absorbed, failing to notice Sesshomaru's glare as well as her own meal.

Jaken greeted her but, in a breach of her normal etiquette and politeness, Ginrei ignored him. Jaken huffed once with surprise and then, nervous and sensing the odd undercurrents in the room, began talking to the girls instead.

With no time at all Hanone's lips were smeared with sauce. Ginrei stepped in, wiping her clawed fingers delicately around her daughter's mouth to clean it. Hanone tolerated it, even smiling open mouthed at her mother, showing tiny canine teeth glinting beyond her lips. When she'd finished with that task Ginrei patiently picked up Hanone's chopsticks and began to curl her daughter's fingers around the implements, guiding her.

Sesshomaru made a small, thick noise in his throat. Ginrei ignored him, though her expression worked, changing into a scowl. Her grip on the chopsticks must've tightened because abruptly Hanone whimpered and fought her mother's touch.

Saya, who already had the skill to wield chopsticks firmly established, leaned over the table from her spot directly next to Sesshomaru. She held her chopsticks out and waved them frantically at Hanone and Ginrei. "See Hanone! See Sister! Look here! Look here!"

Hanone's silver eyes flicked toward Saya but Ginrei ignored the other little girl. She continued her work, wrapping Hanone's fingers and hands around the chopsticks.

"This is how you hold them!" Saya announced proudly, turning her hand over to provide Hanone with multiple angles from which to view her technique. Hanone watched her sister avidly, her mouth slightly ajar, her attention completely riveted.

"Ginrei," Sesshomaru called his wife's name in a thick growl, "Stop it, _now."_

Hunger had vanished, replaced by rash, free-flowing anger. Sesshomaru's fingers twitched and he let go of his own chopsticks, letting them stand in his bowl awkwardly mounted upright like monuments to fallen heroes. The rational side of him would've been annoyed with Ginrei's pestering help to their daughter without the influence of powerful hormones because Hanone would never learn to do it on her own without a lot of trial and error. The added stress of growing, unspent sexual drives didn't help the situation at all. He was consumed with a restless need to tackle Ginrei and forcibly separate her from Hanone. He'd snap the chopsticks and shred what remained into nasty splinters…

For the first time Ginrei spoke, though she didn't lift her gaze to him. "I have every right to help her."

"Stop it, _now."_ Sesshomaru reiterated and felt his heart pick up speed, tightening inside his chest. He felt slightly dizzy and was forced to draw several unusually deep breaths to correct the ailment.

"You can't stop me!" Ginrei sneered, gripping Hanone's hand and the chopsticks inside her own. Her daughter whimpered uncertainly and tugged backward, trying to escape her mother's grasp.

"I can." Sesshomaru snarled back at her. His hands clenched into fists on his lap. He hid them in his sleeves.

Ginrei twisted slightly and at last let go of Hanone so that she could face Sesshomaru directly, glaring at him across the table. Her silver eyes burned from within. There was a touch of color near the black pupils, slivers of red, the marks of a creature that had nearly lost control. "You promised me!" she hissed, lifting one finger to point at him accusingly.

When she made the motion Sesshomaru reacted with thinking. Reaching out he slapped her hand out of the air, pushing her backward into her seat. "Obey me," he muttered in a deep, dangerous voice.

Ginrei's lips curved into a silent snarl, about to let loose and attack him—but in that moment the door slid open and Rin entered the room, momentarily distracting her from Sesshomaru.

Rin hadn't joined them immediately because she'd been bathing and dressing. The sight of her, the scent of the fresh, clean skin and the oils she used to fragrance the bathwater, taunted Sesshomaru, overwhelming him for a moment. He cringed, making a full, complete frowning expression just once before he'd regained control. Rin had bathed twice in one day because Sesshomaru had "required" her not only throughout the night, but also in the afternoon.

He'd bitten her again as well, though it was not as deep this time. To hide the wound on her shoulder Rin wore a high necked kimono and combed her hair long on the side where the bandages peeped over her neck. Her face was bright red as she stepped into the room and sat in the spot closest to Sesshomaru.

"Mama!" Saya called out loudly to Rin and waved her chopsticks in the air triumphantly. "Hanone doesn't know how to use these!"

"Oh," Rin paused for a moment, taking in the room around her, the tenseness, the anger, the bug-eyed gawking from Jaken and the pale-faced Hanone. Only Saya seemed to be unaffected. "I'm sure she'll learn. Hanone is a smart, pretty girl, just like Lady Ginrei."

Rin the diplomat, Rin the peacemaker, the child that had carried flowers. Unfortunately this situation was one that she would never be able to diffuse with words. Ginrei normally would've bowed and thanked Rin for the compliment genuinely. Now she frowned, her silvered eyes flicking over Rin and then jumping to Sesshomaru and narrowing bitterly.

"You broke your promise, Husband." She addressed him mockingly, with a mixture of informal and formal words. Her lips quivered when she'd stopped speaking.

"I have done nothing." Sesshomaru told her, almost barking the denial.

"You take _everything_ from me!" Ginrei hissed.

"You will be silent." Sesshomaru ordered her, again using his quiet, dangerous voice of warning.

"I will not! You must make amends, _Husband._" Defiantly she reached for Hanone's bowl and her chopsticks. She started feeding Hanone, though the little girl turned her head away and started to cry. When Ginrei pushed the food at her more forcefully, Hanone slapped at it with all of the power in her three year old limbs. The food flew out of the chopsticks and onto Hanone, Ginrei, and Jaken.

Jaken indignantly huffed and pawed at the food disgustedly. Then, unable to resist, he began to scold Ginrei. "Lady Ginrei take back what you've said! Lord Sesshomaru owes you nothing and has done nothing wrong! He has only been righteous toward you…!"

Ginrei bared her teeth at him and slammed the dirtied chopsticks onto the table. Hanone was crying pathetically, wiping at her pudgy cheeks with her messy fingers. Grumbling without proper words, Ginrei pulled Hanone into her arms and left the room, walking out with stiff, tensed muscles. Her scent wafted behind her and Sesshomaru fought the powerful, restless trembling in his legs, the desire to rush after her and wrestle with her, to sink his teeth into her…

Noticing the slight motion of Sesshomaru's body, the quivering of his thighs, Rin reached to where his hand rested in his lap, but as her hand made contact with Sesshomaru's body he flinched and glared at her. Alarmed, Rin blinked her suddenly burning, teary eyes. She looked to the maid that had reappeared to set a bowl of food before her and thanked her in a wavering voice.

Now Saya made a little sound, whimpering weakly. The acrid smell of her tears brought pain, piercing and fierce, into Sesshomaru's temples. "Stop crying." He ordered her in a growl.

Saya had never been scolded by Sesshomaru before. She stared at her father, tears rolling over her cheeks. The purplish crescent moon in her forehead, one of the many traits she shared with Sesshomaru, warped and twisted as her tiny face furrowed in a deep frown, one of very few in her short lifetime. She squeaked, "Father?"

He glanced toward her once, seeing her face so like his own, the expression of pain being one that he was not accustomed to, though it was one he'd seen on Rin's face many times. She was a creature with his face, but Rin's facial expressions. For a moment he was consumed with the desire to reach out and touch her, scent her hair, and comfort her, but in the next second his mind jumped from fatherhood to manhood.

"I will return shortly." He announced to the awkward, thick silence, and then left the room following Ginrei's scent.

It was time for him to flee. Jouka couldn't contain both Sesshomaru and Ginrei without the ever-growing chance of disaster. He would kill Rin without a doubt if he continued to _use_ her as a brief release. After every coupling Rin was exhausted and Sesshomaru was not blinded enough by his desire to miss the painful expressions she wore around him now. She had begun to understand that he was not behaving normally at all. This was not a time of slightly increased libido—it was _madness._

Sesshomaru had often contemplated claiming Hanone as his heir. It was unorthodox for him to take a daughter as an heir, but it would solve his current problem. He only maintained his marriage with Ginrei because he planned on it producing a pureblooded son, a true heir. Instead he had Hanone. Ginrei had insisted that she would willingly try to give him the son he desired, as long as she was allowed to raise and claim Hanone as her own. Also, added into the mix, was the Isei. As soon as a son was born from their union, Sesshomaru would annul their marriage, setting Ginrei free and allotting the Isei province of the Middle Lands—currently in his possession—to her.

If he claimed Hanone it _would_ break his promise to Ginrei, but it would free him of his responsibility to create another heir and, in so doing, hurt Rin again.

He focused on Rin's face as he moved through the hallway: the sweat on her brow as she'd labored to give birth to Saya, the glow in her cheeks and her gaze when she gave her body to him, when she cried out with pleasure, when she fell asleep beside Saya, holding their daughter close to her beating heart…for her he would break his promise and take Hanone as his heir without hesitation…

And yet Hanone was an improper heir, she hadn't impressed him yet. It was a shame to accept her when Saya—a mere _hanyou_—excelled so much more, casting a massive, looming shadow over Hanone.

_If only Rin were inuyoukai!_

It was impossible, unthinkable, for him to name Saya as an heir. A hanyou would never be respected the same way as a pureblooded child. Other demons would quash her. They would even set out to do it purposefully, simply because she was hanyou. Adding to the problems of hanyou was the fact that they had fertility problems. They were difficult to be carried and born—as Rin's uncountable miscarriages and troubling pregnancy partly proved—and they themselves were frequently infertile. Saya might be fertile for only a few short years, and carrying the child could kill her…there were too many uncertainties. It was an impossible thought.

Too soon he reached Ginrei's room and heard his wife speaking in low, comforting voices to Hanone, who was still whimpering. Anger rushed back into him and Sesshomaru rolled open the sliding door without hesitation or restraint. The door clattered off its hinges.

Hanone cried out, startled and afraid. Ginrei and Hanone were sitting on their futon. Hanone was cradled as if she were still a baby in Ginrei's arm. As Hanone squirmed and tried to burrow into her mother's robes or the covers on the futon, Ginrei lifted her glaring, slitted eyes at Sesshomaru. "Get out!"

Although Sesshomaru tried to say: _"I will do no such thing,"_ his higher brain functions had mostly vanished. Instead of words, a deep, thrumming growl issued out of his throat. Ginrei's scent hovered heavily in the room and seemed to coat the inside of his body. Heat rushed through his body, his chest, his arms, his neck, and his face.

The growl made Ginrei's expression loosen, slackening slightly. Although she was curling her lips to expose her teeth ferociously, like a she-wolf standing guard over her den, Ginrei's body was reacting a similar way. She held her frightened, whimpering daughter close to her body and shifted in her spot, changing position. _"Get out."_ Now her words were slurred into a growl as well.

Sesshomaru took a step forward, doing exactly the opposite of what she'd ordered. His erection grew with each anticipatory step—and then abruptly the scent of Hanone's tears reached him, pushing deep inside his brain. He halted, the powerful drive to attack Ginrei fading just enough that he could speak and think again. He dropped suddenly into a sitting position to hide his aroused condition and struggled to focus his mind.

Ginrei moved away from him, blinking as if she too had woken out of the bizarre sexual trance. She rocked on her heels, cooing at Hanone.

Four years ago when the same situation had happened Hanone hadn't been there to get in the way. Now she was Sesshomaru's saving grace.

Shame brought a return of heat to his face as he realized the terror they were inflicting on Hanone. He closed his eyes and steeled himself against the temptation of Ginrei's scent. "I came to discuss my promise to you…" he forced the words out, enunciating carefully and breathing slowly.

Ginrei was hyperventilating, almost panting. There was a thin sheen of sweat over her brow. "Your promise?" her words were barely distinguishable. She had even less control over herself than Sesshomaru. Only the fact that her arms were full with Hanone kept her sitting where she was. She'd completely forgotten about their fight from only a few minutes previously.

There were many things he needed to discuss with her if he seriously wished to adopt Hanone as his heir. He would have to give Ginrei something in compensation—but it was impossible for him to think clearly. Sesshomaru blinked carefully several times, shaking his head sharply once. Then, unsteadily, he rose to his feet.

Hanone's crying had begun to lessen. She was sniffling and squirming in Ginrei's arms, trying to sneak quick peeks at her father from the safety of her mother's lap. Her eyes, silvered like Ginrei's, were red-rimmed and wet.

Unless he left swiftly, Sesshomaru had no doubt that he'd find himself pushing Hanone aside and straddling Ginrei, pinning her with violence at first and then with lust. He'd betray Rin with his own bodily weakness.

That thought sobered him enough to pass through the open doorway and into the hall. Maids skittered by him, ducking their heads, averting their eyes. Behind him one of them started speaking to Ginrei, trying to offer some sort of comfort, asking her if she needed anything.

"Take Hanone for me." Ginrei ordered the maid and, a second later Sesshomaru sensed Ginrei's footsteps coming up behind him, heavy and angry.

His body stiffened as she drew nearer. Sesshomaru picked up his pace, heading for Rin's bedchambers, but Ginrei matched his speed and before he'd reached is destination she'd grabbed him by the arm, stopping him. Sesshomaru whipped around and pushed her away from him. A deep, primeval growl started in his throat.

They faced one another in the hall, glaring but silent. Ginrei backed down abruptly, wrapping her arms around herself and starting to shiver. She blinked and looked around, as if she didn't know where she was or how she'd gotten there. The spell of her own pheromones, as well as Sesshomaru's, had bewitched her too. They suffered together…

"What…what were you saying?" Ginrei asked him in a quiet, timid voice.

"Another time." Sesshomaru told her thickly.

Stiffly they nodded at one another and parted ways. Disaster had been very narrowly avoided.

He reached Rin's bedchambers and snapped at the maid inside. She scuttled out of the room hurriedly and slid the door shut behind her. Alone, Sesshomaru sat on Rin's bed and waited, drawing deep, full breaths and closing his eyes. When Rin finished her meal and left the tearoom, she arrived in her bedchambers with Saya trailing behind her. Sesshomaru watched their shadows moving toward the door, thrown over the screened walls. Their voices, Saya's high and quivering, Rin's deep and comforting, flowed into his acute ears.

"Hanone's crying because Father is fighting with Lady Ginrei…" Saya's shadow lunged forward and wrapped itself around Rin's long legs, burying her face in her robes. She sobbed and shook her head. Her shadow reflected this through the rippling of her hair. "Why did he yell at me, Mama? What did I do?"

Rin paused in front of the door, stopped by Saya's grasp around her legs. She ducked awkwardly and stretched out with one arm to stroke Saya. "Shhh, baby, it's all right…"

Although Rin's voice was strong, Sesshomaru didn't fail to catch the waver in it. Rin was upset as well. Heat swelled through his chest and over his face, warring with the powerful warmth in his gut and loins. He blinked and his lips turned downward slightly as he struggled to dim the desire inside his body and mind, to separate the two at least to allow coherent, clear thought. He would not abuse Rin, he would not _use_ her as a temporary sexual release, it was cruel.

He would tell her that he was leaving. _Tonight._

"Don't cry, Saya. Your father loves you. You know that right?" Rin was saying. Her shadow fingers moved over the screen, long and elegant, combing through Saya's hair.

Saya sniffled and pulled back. She wiped at her nose with one arm and hand. "Yes, Mama."

As Saya let go of Rin's legs, Rin reached for the door and slid it open. Before she'd taken her first step into the room she'd spotted Sesshomaru where he was sitting in the center of her futon, stiff but stoic.

"Lord Sesshomaru." She blinked away the surprise of her initial reaction and dropped swiftly into a bow. Sesshomaru didn't miss the way her body quivered, and the spike in her scent. She was apprehensive of his presence, almost outright _afraid._

Having already caught her mother's reaction, Saya stepped forward and bowed clumsily as well. She whimpered and snuck quick peeks at him through her wild hair. Her golden eyes were red-rimmed. Sesshomaru could smell her tears now and he was thankful for the alarm that raced through him in response. An instinct instilled in him by millions of years of mammalian evolution (A/N: I reason that he's a dog youkai so he must be a mammal) to protect and nurture his own offspring, the pack mentality that he had often ignored in his youth.

The instinct of protection and fatherhood was able, for the time being, to take precedence over the drive to mate. But between the two drives it was reproduction that was more powerful, more ancient.

Focusing his thoughts on Saya, Sesshomaru at last found the presence of mind to speak clearly. "Rin. I am leaving for a time."

She sat up, her hands fidgeted in her lap. "Why must Lord Sesshomaru leave again? He has only just returned to us. Now he must depart so soon?"

Saya sat up abruptly and leaned forward, desperation glinting in her golden eyes. "Father if I did something bad I'm sorry!" she started crying pathetically, "I didn't mean it!"

"Hush, Saya," Sesshomaru leveled his own golden gaze at her and managed to control his voice, keeping it in a low, soft tone. He lifted one clawed hand and gestured at his daughter. She rushed forward at it and clung to his side, pressing her small body close to him. Sesshomaru laid his hand over her head, feeling her pale hair. "I will not be gone for long. A week at most."

Rin nodded where she still sat, some distance away at the door. Though Sesshomaru couldn't be sure of it, he thought he perceived relief in her expression. Although Sesshomaru wanted to call her forward to embrace her, to touch her skin and her hair before he left, he resisted the temptation, keeping Saya close instead.

A week's time would be long enough to purge the desire from his system. He could return to them levelheaded. Rin's bite wounds could heal; the distance would replenish her strength as well. It was the right thing to do.

"I will depart now," he told them, moving Saya gently away and rising to is feet. Saya sniffled and watched him go, her golden eyes wide. Rin rose to her feet and moved out of the doorway to let him pass.

Sesshomaru paused for only a moment to meet her eye, exchanging a sort of secret, unsaid goodbye. But Rin had other thoughts pressing in on her mind. She took hold of his arm as he started to turn his back on her and tugged him closer as she whispered her question. "It's because of Ginrei, isn't it? What has she done to…"

His face rippled for a moment with displeasure and then Sesshomaru removed Rin's hand from his arm stiffly. "Yes," he told her darkly, his voice dropping into a growl. There was no way that Sesshomaru could express the truth to Rin, but staring at her, into her worried, frantic face, he suspected that she'd pieced the answer together for herself.

When he caught the pain starting to warp her lips into a frown and creep into her brown eyes, Sesshomaru grasped her chin and jaw with one hand, tilting her head upwards. "I have broken no promises."

She blinked abruptly, banishing the tears that sprang to her eyes, and pulled her chin free of his grasp. "I understand."

His hands were beginning to shake, but Sesshomaru slipped his clawed hand between the curtain of her long, flowing black hair and touched her cheek, cupping it gently. His fingers grazed her shoulders and her neck where she sported small wounds from his recent ravenous, uncontrollable sexual appetite. Heat swept over his face and neck at the memory, fresh shame.

"I must go." He turned his back on her and left, his white hair and hakama flowing behind him.

* * *

In the month before his wedding, Shimofuri remained in the castle city of Sobadzue in the Itou. Preparations were still being made for the event. Women, seamstresses, often summoned him to review their work or for him to stand motionlessly for a few hours while they worked and took measurements. Somewhere, in the women's quarters, Amagumori underwent the same slow torture.

After the contracts and records had been agreed upon, arrangements were made to bring the couple together, to socialize them before the wedding. Shimofuri, Tsukiyume, Sasugainu, Soeki, and Amagumori shared meals together. They were meant to be informal but the atmosphere was anything but jovial and usually the only one seemingly enjoying himself was Sasugainu.

During one late night meal Sasugainu indulged in sake. He drank cup after cup of it while he discussed battles that had been fought before Shimofuri's birth. His audience was moderately interested in the topic, though Amagumori always sat at Sasugainu's side with her eyes downcast and her mouth pinched in a tight, uncomfortable line. Soeki on her father's other side gazed at Sasugainu with a sharp, clear and intelligent gaze, like a cat observing a dog from a distance. For his part Shimofuri was intrigued by the tale of his grandfather's battles. Old Koshoshiro had, in his distant youth, fought alongside the legendary Inutaisho.

Shimofuri cleared his throat and started to inquire toward Taikokajin, his mother's, battle history. "Uncle, I know that Grandfather taught my mother how to fight. I was never told whether she had occasion to use it. Did she indeed fight alongside—"

Sasugainu pulled the cup of sake from his lips and scoffed shortly at his nephew. "Enough of that mess. Let's talk about _your_ battles, young Shimofuri." Grunting, Shasugainu lowered his cup and elbowed Soeki on his left, "Fill my cup, Daughter."

Soeki's eyes crinkled in the corners, her mouth worked into a mirthless smile. She lifted the vase of sake and poured it carefully into her father's glass. As she set the vase down again her gaze flicked toward Amagumori and the sisters exchanged a meaningful stare, a silent communication.

Across the table Tsukiyume was watching them. Her ears flattened atop her head and then lifted up like radars, seeking out the unspoken words hovering in the room.

Sasugainu sipped greedily from his cup and then gestured with one clawed hand at Shimofuri's half empty cup. "Amagumori! Fill Shimofuri's cup! You lazy…" his words drifted off, slurred and indistinct.

Amagumori reached for the vase to do as she was told but Shimofuri gave a curt gesture and shook his head. "No thank you, I've had all I care to."

"Soon you'll drink every drop you can, Nephew. Marriage will do that to you! Hah! And soon to think I will embark on that again myself!" Sasugainu slurped at his full cup, downing it and slamming it back onto the table with a thick gasp. Amagumori moved preemptively in to refill the cup for him. Sasugainu watched the sloshing sake hungrily while Shimofuri eyed his uncle carefully.

"The clan has arranged another marriage for you, Uncle?" He asked, raising his eyebrows inquisitively.

"Not the clan," Sasugainu shook his head, his eyes rolled wildly with the movement, as if unable to keep up.

"Then who?" Shimofuri insisted, leaning forward.

Sasugainu swayed and then cleared his throat, squeezing his eyes closed for a moment to regain control. "Never mind that, we're here for your wedding." He coughed briefly into his hand and then rose shakily to his feet. "If you'll excuse me for a moment, I need the privy." He dropped his cup, spilling the remnants of it onto the table, and stumbled away toward the sliding door.

As his footsteps receded Soeki slammed her palms down against the table and glared at Shimofuri. "You have to stop this!"

Tsukiyume flinched at the outburst; her ears swiveled uncertainly in multiple directions. When Shimofuri didn't immediately answer Soeki, Tsukiyume spoke for him. "Don't you think my brother tried? Uncle insisted that…"

Shimofuri laid a hand on her shoulder and Tsukiyume fell silent, her lips compressing as she bit back her words.

Soeki and Amagumori glanced toward one another and then Soeki spoke again for them, "Our father is insane. He hasn't consulted the clan regarding this wedding. He stole our mother's ashes from us!" The desperate look between the sisters flashed once more before Soeki blurted out more, "The servants tell us he stays up late into the night chanting and talking to himself! He's lost his mind! You must believe us!"

"Do you think I am a fool?" Shimofuri demanded, his voice dropping into a growl of irritation, "I've resisted your father's wishes from the beginning of this entire charade! I know he's trying to take my lands from me. He has no son—unless he passes his lands to you Soeki, why has he grown so power hungry?"

Amagumori spoke up at last, teary-eyed. "We don't know, but you _must_ stop this marriage!"

Shimofuri locked his gaze with his fiancée, narrowing his blue-gray eyes at her, "If you can think of a way, then by all means, tell me and I will act upon it. Otherwise you and I will be married and—"

"He's coming back!" Soeki hissed, silencing Shimofuri midsentence. Indeed, they could hear Sasugainu's drunken, unsteady gait as he approached the room. Although drunk it was likely that Sasugainu's hearing remained as sharp as their own. He wouldn't miss their words, no matter how quietly they were spoken.

Shimofuri watched his intended bride's face for a time. She was young and handsome, her face resembled Sasugainu's slightly with a strong, proud nose and jaw. She was beautiful in her own way. Her eyes were blue-gray much like Shimofuri's own, though her hair was white like Sasugainu's. In human society marrying one's cousin was generally acceptable. It was permitted at times within the inuyoukai clan to keep certain traits alive or to reaffirm familial loyalties. A war could be avoided by such a marriage. It was possible that Shimofuri and Amagumori could acclimatize themselves to their arranged marriage and actually grow to care for one another. Amagumori could provide Shimofuri with proper heirs, more pureblooded than Lady Yamome from the north could've given him.

But the entire affair struck a foul note of treachery. Staring at his cousin and fiancée, Shimofuri found himself thinking that Amagumori was doomed.

* * *

Rin opened her eyes when she became aware of a trickling wet sound of water flowing over rocks. There was mist flowing thickly around her, the ground beneath her palms was cold though the chill didn't penetrate her sleeping robes. Dew coated her hands and feet and dripped from her hair when she sat up.

It was dawn. The sunrise lit up the eastern horizon where it was hidden by mountains and trees. The trickling sound was from the small river that the Jouka palace was built beside. Rin wrapped her arms around her chest, hugging herself as she gazed around the open field. As a child she'd been trained in horseback riding by a monkey youkai in that same field. She hoped to train Saya in the same art, but Jaken insisted that it was unlikely, even impossible. Saya, being half dog demon, would spook the horses just with her scent. She would be earthbound for the rest of her life.

Rin turned to search for the palace through the mist, but it was too thick, too gray and dark, obscuring the world ten feet and beyond, hiding it from Rin's eyes. How had she come to be lying outside at the banks of the little river?

"You are here because I have summoned you."

The voice startled Rin, making her turn, searching the mists. There was nothing, the speaker was just far enough away to be rendered invisible by the mists. Yet, as Rin stopped and searched her mind, she thought she reached an understanding of just who the speaker was. The low, deep woman's voice was familiar to her. Only a few weeks previously, as the snows had just begun to melt, Rin had been visited in another dream, separated from Saya who slept next to her, and transported elsewhere to receive a message from a goddess that called herself Koeru.

"Koeru?" Rin called, turning again to look through the mists for any sign of movement, a shadow, a strange swirling of the mists…

"That is one of my names, yes." The voice answered, murmuring with amusement. "I have come to reissue my offer to help you, Lady Rin. You have need of me, do you not?"

Rin stiffened. "How can you help me?"

The river made a sound, splashing. Rin whirled in that direction, squinting at the mists. A shadow emerged, short and plump, moving with careful, petite steps through the water. As her feet moved, splashing slightly, silver fish leapt away, appearing there as if the water itself formed them. Rin stared as the shape neared, growing clearer.

Koeru had pink hair, long and straight and shining. It moved with each little step she took, flowing almost as if it were underwater, as if it were immune to gravity. The goddess—if indeed that was what she was—had the body of a child, shapeless and sexless as far as Rin could tell. She was dressed in a golden robe that floated above her feet miraculously, as if the long, flowing hem was made of air or fire.

She smiled at Rin, exposing small, perfect, white teeth. "Lady Rin, it is good to see you once again."

"I've never seen you before." Rin shot back, wrapping her arms more tightly around herself protectively.

The goddess ignored her and launched quickly into her proposal. "I can feel you suffering, little Rin."

Rin took a step back as Koeru began to circle her. Although Rin had never seen one before, the modern eye would've dubbed Koeru's circling walk as similar to a shark's as it prepares to rip apart its kill. The goddess left the river's edge and stepped onto the grass. She left tiny, humanlike footsteps in the dew.

"I'm fine." Rin said, thickly.

"Are you?" Koeru asked, smiling warmly in Rin's direction as she continued to circle her. "It's exactly as I promised, isn't it? Sesshomaru cannot help himself. You've seen dogs following a bitch in heat, haven't you, Rin? As a child, in the fields."

The goddess was reading her mind, peeking at Rin's thoughts and memories. The idea of it was unthinkable to Rin. She shook her head helplessly. "How…?"

"Sesshomaru and Ginrei are the dog and the bitch in the field. You know that youkai and humankind work on different levels from one another. Your mate sees the world through his nose while you, like the monkeys, use your eyes. While you see anger between Ginrei and your mate, he smells lust and fertility and the pureblooded son he craves." Koeru stopped circling Rin then and turned to face her directly, "The son that you cannot give him."

Now anger shot through Rin, rising in her veins like the staccato beat of her heart. "Why call me here to tell me that? Do you think I don't know that already?"

Koeru smiled at her patiently, as if Rin were a child. "I would never waste your time like that, Lady Rin."

"Then…?"

Koeru began walking back the way she'd come, her bare feet beneath the shadow of her floating robe hems scuffing the dew on the grass. "I've brought you here to offer you the chance to give him that son."

Rin blinked confusedly, "What do you mean?"

The goddess had reached the small stream again. She knelt and picked up a gray stone, palming it and lifting her hand high to show it to Rin. "I am a goddess. With a few tricks I create life, Lady Rin."

The stone in her hand rippled, twisting and changing shape slightly. It lightened, becoming an egg. A tiny, high pitched cheeping rose out of the egg and Koeru grinned proudly. She brought the egg close to her face and puckered her lips as she blew a long breath onto it. The cheeping increased and the egg cracked, splitting. A small, wet chick began fighting its way out of the egg, peeping excitedly.

"You…" Rin swallowed nervously, her eyes darting between the hatching chick and Koeru and her pink hair. "You're saying you can make the next child I carry…pureblooded?"

Koeru nodded, smiling widely.

As if Rin hadn't seen the motion, she rephrased the question and repeated it louder this time: "You could create an inuyoukai son for me?"

"Yes." Koeru flicked the eggshells away from the chick in her hand. It peeped and wriggled, as if shivering. Its feathers were gray and wet, plastered to its body. The goddess ran two fingers over its body and murmured, "This is a boy."

Rin shook her head, an expression that was almost angry curved over her face, narrowing her eyes and thinning her lips. "How? It wouldn't be my child then. It would be yours! The only way that I could give Lord Sesshomaru an heir was if I was an inuyoukai."

"There is a secret language in your body, Lady Rin. It is inside Sesshomaru's as well, inside Saya your daughter, and inside Lady Ginrei and her daughter. It exists in every living creature, from the grass you're standing on to the chick in my palm." She lifted the tiny, shivering chick for Rin to see, smilingly. "The language creates your body inside the womb; it is a divine language, the language of creation. This language is almost the same between Lady Ginrei, Hanone, Sesshomaru and all the other inuyoukai. A different language is written inside of you, a human language. Inside your child Saya the language is a garbled mix between them. That is why hanyou like her, like Tsukiyume, and like Sesshomaru's brother Inuyasha, all find it difficult to have children. The language that they pass on is unreadable; the resulting child dies long before it's born." Her smile fell abruptly and her tone became deeper and more serious. "You know this well."

Rin whispered the word, uncertainly. "Miscarriage?"

Koeru nodded solemnly, "Yes. Lady Rin, many times though you haven't known it, you've carried your Sesshomaru's precious sons. Before you're even aware of them, the language has failed because your body cannot read it. That is why your sons die."

"I don't understand." Rin shook her head hopelessly, frowning with frustration. Some of Koeru's words she understood, but the "language" that Koeru described was foreign to her. Would Koeru tell her that she could teach her to manipulate the language, to speak it and change herself or her unborn children into pureblooded inuyoukai? She tried to find the proper words to express this question, frowning all the while. "Are you going to teach me this language…?"

Koeru scowled, "No, it isn't a language that humans can _speak._ Not yet, anyway…"

"Then what are you saying? How could I have a…" Rin stopped and stared at Koeru with sudden, fresh wariness. "What must I do to receive your _help?_ What price would you set on it?"

The goddess knelt and set the cheeping chick onto the dewy grass. The baby struggled to get to its spindly little legs, seemingly all bone with no muscle at all. Rin watched it for a moment while Koeru spoke, cautiously. "I am a goddess. My power stems from worship. You are the mate of the lord of the Western Lands. If I work this miracle of life for you, in return I expect due praise. Your mate should command all of those below him, his servants, his allies, the youkai, the humans, the peasants, all of them to worship me above all of their other deities, gods and spirits alike."

It seemed too easy, too perfect. Rin hesitated. "Why do you care about the Western Lands?"

"They are expansive and flourishing. My following, in the far north, are small and threatened with extermination." She paused a moment, weighing her next words, perhaps hesitant to reveal them, "Without a people to worship me, I'll be forgotten. A forgotten goddess has no powers, she fades away and dies."

It seemed a reasonable explanation but Rin refused to be swayed by her increasing interest in the idea, the excitement beginning to flutter in her chest, flapping in her brain. What if Koeru's promises were true? What if she could somehow make Rin's next child the son that Sesshomaru wanted?

"How could you truly do what you say you can?" Rin demanded, forcing her excitement to be hidden and bringing her suspicion to the foreground. "And what would this _son_ be like? How could he be my own? Wouldn't he be _yours?_" Rin scowled, losing her patience slightly, "I don't understand this…it's against nature…"

Koeru grinned though there was no humor in the expression, only power. It was a masculine expression, a strange show of power and dominance. "I _am_ nature, Lady Rin."

While Rin watched silently, Koeru knelt and scooped up the struggling chick in both hands, engulfing him in her touch. She enclosed her hands over him and, through the spaces between her fingers, light spurted, sparkling and red like the dawn light. Koeru opened her palms then and tossed the chick into the sky—but it was no longer a chick. It flew away, squawking and cawing. A blackbird.

"I will make you a bargain, Lady Rin." Koeru sprinted quickly to the edge of the river, kicking and splashing at the water for a moment until she knelt and plunged her hand into the rocks. When she stood up straight she was holding a smooth earthen jar. "There is a potion I will provide you. In a jar like this, at the edge of the river. When you waken you may seek it out and drink from it. Drink down the entire jar; mix it with your tea twice a day for three days. When Lord Sesshomaru returns take him to your bed and you will conceive his heir."

"What's in the jar?" Rin asked, pointing with open suspicion.

"The potion will allow me to rewrite and edit the language of the child you conceive. I will make him your own but pureblooded. He will have the power of many inuyoukai families…" Koeru's lips curved in a small, clever smile that Rin didn't trust.

"What do you mean? How is that possible?" she demanded, feeling her palms and her temples itching with sweat and tension. The sun hadn't climbed any higher in the sky. Time had frozen. She was trapped inside this bizarre dream meeting place.

Koeru's form rippled and expanded, growing taller and lankier. The pink hair darkened and grew finer, smoother. The round, feminine face warped, becoming longer with a more pronounced brow. The cheeks displayed two slashes of reddish color and a bluish crescent moon formed in the center of her forehead.

Rin backpedaled several steps, her eyes widening, her hands rising to cover her gaping mouth. The goddess had become a near-clone of Sesshomaru, but the eyes were blue-gray and there were some features that Rin didn't recognize completely, and he had dark, blue-black hair. But when the bizarre creature smiled, Rin recognized her own face beaming out at her from it. "What is this?" she demanded, though by looking at it she thought she already knew.

"This is one possible way that Sesshomaru's heir could look. I'm sure you can see that he is also your son." The strange creature before her took a step closer, its lips quirking pleasantly. "Do you enjoy the sight? Would you be proud to be his mother?"

Rin struggled to breathe enough to speak clearly. Finally she asked, "Could you give him Sesshomaru's hair?"

The shape melted, shrinking as Koeru laughed gleefully. When she spoke again she had returned to her almost childlike stature and the pink, straight hair of moments ago. "Of course."

"And what must I do for you in the meantime…?" Rin asked, her voice quiet, awed.

Koeru smiled warmly at her, her earthy brown eyes crinkling at the corners. "Erect a shrine for me inside your own room. Burn incense, leave offerings at the edge of the river to show your loyalty. Spread my name through the villages closest to you. Let them pray to me when they plant their rice. Set all of the palace to worshipping me and I will know you'll keep your promise and I will keep mine." She leveled her gaze at Rin meaningfully. "You will have your son, and Lady Ginrei will be gone and left behind."

Rin stammered, trying to interject one last uncertain question, "What if I decide I don't want to do this…?"

The goddess offered her the same benign smile. "Then you will live with Lady Ginrei the rest of your life, wondering if your mate has remained faithful and kept his promise to you. When you are an old woman you will suffer undoubtedly, feeling left behind as the inuyoukai and your hanyou daughter do not age as you do and, for all of his affection for her, Saya will amount to little as far as Sesshomaru's line is concerned. You will be forgotten…" her smile turned sly at last, as if sharing a secret joke with Rin, "…but a son will carry your name and memory into history…"

The idea was seductive, bizarre, and unnatural, but it lured Rin in like cheese on the tip of the mousetrap. She would be the only mortal to achieve such a thing, it would be astounding, the sort of thing that would propel her name into legend. And that of her son and Sesshomaru as well…

* * *

A/N: In case not everyone understood my allusion, the "language" that Koeru told Rin about is DNA. "Language" was the best way I could think of to describe DNA in shorthand, other than an instruction manual for creating a living thing. And I liked the idea of the mixing, the hybridization of species, being like mixing two languages. You get something unreadable then, thus infertility. Oh **Question** for you guys who are more knowledgeable about the manga and stuff than me (which is like all of you) was it ever relayed to us how exactly **Rin's family was killed? And how did Rin survive while they died?**


	5. The Invitation

A/N: To **Kirejugatsu **I agree! She's had a hard lot in life. I'll tell you this much though, don't worry about her too much. She can hold her own. Besides, I will take care of her. 8-)

**Thank **you to everyone that wrote in sharing what they knew of Rin's original manga back story! I'd always said her family was killed by bandits, at least I referenced it once in _Runaway_ but having it confirmed was very good. Anyway, I sat down and gave this story and its progression some thought and, after my brainstorming, I've discovered some thoroughly gut-wrenching (not necessarily heartstrings pulling and tear-jerking!) things I can do. I believe I am going to have a LOT of fun with this story, and Sess is probably going to suffer a lot more than usual. That's what I'm thinking right now…it could change because my writing often takes leaps while I'm actually writing that I didn't plan on, but so far…oooo delicious, Fluffy-sama suffering. I think most of you would agree he generally doesn't suffer too much, cool, powerful and suave…(I'm grinning evilly right now)…time to go make some quesadillas!

Oh and btw **lemon warning!!** I don't think it's that bad of one but just warning you! Hopefully no one will be horribly offended, that is certainly not my intention.

Disclaimer: I do not own Sess or Rin

Last Chapter: Koeru and Rin made a deal: _"There is a potion I will provide you. In a jar like this, at the edge of the river. When you waken you may seek it out and drink from it. Drink down the entire jar; mix it with your tea twice a day for three days. When Lord Sesshomaru returns take him to your bed and you will conceive his heir."_ Sasugainu's daughters begged Shimofuri: _Amagumori spoke up at last, teary-eyed. "We don't know, but you must stop this marriage!"_ And Sesshomaru went a little nuts because of Ginrei's scent: _Focusing his thoughts on Saya, Sesshomaru at last found the presence of mind to speak clearly. "Rin. I am leaving for a time."_

* * *

**The Invitation**

In the morning, while Rin enjoyed her breakfast and tried to stomach the strange, earthy taste of her tea, Jaken stumbled into the tearoom, shouting for her urgently. Saya, sitting at Rin's side, jumped to her feet and rushed to open the door for Jaken as if she were a servant, but the hanyou child hardly minded.

Jaken spilled into the room gasping. "Lady Rin! Rin!" at times the toad still failed to add the proper titles of respect to Rin's name, but Tin never fussed at him because of their long years together hunting Naraku.

She turned, setting her teacup onto the table and scowling at the taste. "What is it, Jaken?"

"A fox! A kitsune just arrived! He asked to see you and Lord Sesshomaru!" Jaken puffed a few more breaths in and out and then continued in a higher, unbelieving wail, "He was sent by that scum Lord Shimofuri!"

Rin hid her curiosity at once. Shimofuri's name had been thrown at her many times before to test her loyalty to Sesshomaru, but although Rin maintained an interest in Shimofuri's doings and habits, she wasn't about to runoff with him. She nodded to acknowledge Jaken's words dully and reached for her teacup again. She wouldn't leave before she'd downed every last drop.

Raising her arms brought brief pain through her chest—her breasts were becoming slightly tender.

"Aren't you coming, Rin?" Jaken demanded, panting, "He's waiting!"

Saya moved then, startling the toad into blinking at her, his triangular mouth hanging open and exposing his little lizard-like sliver of pink-red tongue. "You foolish girl! You startled me!"

"Sorry Jaken," Saya apologized and then looked to her mother eagerly, her golden eyes shining merrily, "Mama! A fox! I wanna meet him! Can I go?"

Rin set the teacup down and rose to her feet, "Now we can go."

They left the tearoom and moved down the hall toward Jouka's small audience room. Saya led the way, hopping and skipping playfully, Rin followed in the middle and Jaken padded along last. Before the door to the audience room, Rin caught the door, holding it shut when Saya pulled on it, gruntingly.

"Mama! You said I could…"

"Not yet." Rin knelt and turned Saya to face her. Her daughter stared at her, unblinkingly, her golden eyes glittering and waiting expectantly. Rin smiled at her gently and brushed Saya's hair out of her face, straightened her tiny obi, and then turned her around to adjust the child's collar and the ornate bow that secured her obi in the back. When she was satisfied at last, Rin traced one blunt finger over the bluish crescent moon in the center of Saya's forehead. "All done, pretty one."

Saya grinned proudly at her and then turned and opened the sliding door, stepping confidently into the audience room. Before following her, Rin looked back to Jaken. "Would you bring Ginrei to the audience hall as well?"

Jaken nodded and almost fell over himself in a bow. When he looked up again Rin was gone, slipped through the door into the audience room.

Inside, Rin sat next to Saya and observed the messenger before them. He was a fox as large as a Great Dane, gray colored but with a cream belly. Showing his deference and respect, the fox was sitting on his haunches but he'd tucked his head down low, between his front paws. It was an awkward position meant to mimic a human's greeting bow of respect, but for the fox it was more of an inconvenience that was almost comical. As Rin sat in front of him the fox's ears flattened against the sides of his head, listening and acknowledging her arrival in the same motion.

"Sit up," Rin ordered.

The fox obeyed and lifted his head, opening his canine jaws wide in a wolfish expression that might've been a smile. "Lady Rin," he began in a deep, rich voice that was understandable and yet at once inhuman, "I am Aojiroi Jinsoku. I serve Lord Shimofuri of the Middle Lands."

Rin nodded slowly and offered him a small, cautious smile, "Yes, I remember you."

Through the still-open sliding door Ginrei entered. Her robes rustled loudly, drawing Jinsoku's attention. His eyes were a bright yellow, like kernels of corn, though none of the people inside the audience room had seen corn and it was highly doubtful that they ever would. Unusual as it was, Ginrei had entered the room without Hanone in tow. Her face was pale, as she sat down a short distance from Rin and Saya. Jinsoku bowed to her curtly and introduced himself. Ginrei did the same quickly and Jinsoku turned his attention back to Rin.

"Lady Rin," he intoned, enunciating the words carefully with his long, pink fox's tongue, "I have been sent to cordially invite you and Lord Sesshomaru to Lord Shimofuri's wedding." he stopped and glanced toward Ginrei apologetically, "of course you are welcomed as well, my lady."

Rin withheld her desire to reveal the surprise she felt at the news. She'd heard nothing from Shimofuri in the last year or so, she'd assumed he'd busied himself with his own internal affairs inside the Middle Lands. She plastered the same, cautious smile over her face as she answered Jinsoku. "What a pleasant surprise, I'm sure we'd be delighted to go. Unfortunately Lord Sesshomaru is absent right now, but please, tell me when Lord Shimofuri's wedding is scheduled to take place?"

"It will happen in a week's time, in the Itou province, in Sobadzue castle." The fox answered her, still grinning his canine smile, "Could you be kind enough to tell me where Lord Sesshomaru has gone? I must find him and give him the same invitation."

Rin shook her head slowly, "I'm afraid his whereabouts are unknown to us."

The fox watched her silently for a moment, his yellow eyes narrowing. At last he nodded, "Thank you ladies, I must take my leave of you now and search for Lord Sesshomaru. If you should see him, would you extend Lord Shimofuri's invitation to him as well?"

"Yes," Rin nodded, "we will do that."

"Wait!" Saya shouted, waving her arms once to attract the fox's attention, "You can't go yet! Please show me some of your kitsune magic!"

The fox cocked his head at an angle and let his tongue loll out. "Magic? Little girl, I have no magic! What made you think that I have magic?"

Saya looked uncertainly toward Rin and to Ginrei though the inuyoukai woman was as good as absent from the current conversation. Swallowing, Saya faced the fox, "But—you're a _fox…"_

Rin cleared her throat, making Saya glance back at her mother alertly. "Saya, don't pester our guest, it's very rude."

The little girl's face set into an expressionless mask and she dropped into a bow as if reacting to a command. "I am very sorry."

"There's no need to be sorry," Jinsoku replied, standing on all-fours again, rising as it were from his sitting position, "she is correct, I am a fox youkai and I do have magic. She was so direct; I couldn't help but tease her. If you would permit it, Lady Rin, I would give her a gift before I leave."

Rin hesitated, staring at the fox for a long moment before making a small motion with her hand, giving him permission. Aojiroi Jinsoku was a messenger from another land, another province. Shimofuri and Sesshomaru had been enemies before, and she doubted that Shimofuri had forgotten Sesshomaru's sins against him. It seemed unlikely to her that Shimofuri would knowingly send his servant on a mission to harm Saya—who was hanyou anyway and therefore useless to Sesshomaru as an heir—it was out of character for him on multiple levels. Yet, inuyoukai had surprised her before, what if Shimofuri had indeed changed? She watched, feeling a growing stiffness in her back, as the fox presented Saya with a small, shiny white stone.

"This is a magic stone," Jinsoku told her, "keep it with you and it can protect you. With the power of the stone you can be a shape shifter, just like a fox."

Saya gaped at the white stone in her palm, small and insignificant. She turned it in the light, examining it with a jeweler's eye, inspecting it as if she suspected a fake or a counterfeit. "How does it work?"

The fox showed all of his white fangs in a massive, wide grin. "That is the secret magic of the stone. To master its power you must learn it for yourself, young one."

For a microsecond Saya scowled and then her face cleared and she nodded. "Thank you, Jinsoku-sama."

The fox, noticing Rin's stiff stare, backed away from her several steps and bowed, bidding them all an elaborate, flowery farewell. After he had left the audience room, Rin watched her daughter tuck the white stone away in her robes with great care, as if she were handling a great, fragile treasure. Pinching her lips together worriedly, Rin turned toward Ginrei and, seeing that the inuyoukai woman was seemingly watching Saya as well, hazarded asking her for advice. "Should I allow her to keep that stone? Is it safe?"

Ginrei blinked, coming out of a daze, refocusing on Rin. "What did you ask?"

Rin frowned and shook her head, dismissing the question and her own concerns. "Oh, nothing."

What harm could a white stone do? It was probably just a plain stone with no power at all…

* * *

Three days later, shortly after dawn, Rin woke abruptly, gasping. Her forehead was coated with sweat, her skin sticky when she touched it. The light in her room was still gray, faint and unclear. The shadows had yet to relinquish their grasp over the world. A dream, a nightmare had troubled Rin and sent her careening out of the sleep world, but awake it was vanished.

Saya slept at her side, nestled close to her, the white stone that the fox had given her was tucked away inside one of Saya's socks on one side of the futon bed. Rin stroked her child's white hair, pristine as freshly fallen snow. Even while Sesshomaru was far away from her, Saya stayed close by. She was Rin's blessing, her truest companion.

The smallest sound, a minute creak of the floorboards, or perhaps it was a change in the air pressure, set Rin off. She looked up, her brown eyes wide and awake, searching. A shadow fell across her door and Rin's shoulders slumped with relief as she recognized it: Sesshomaru.

He had returned.

Rin shifted on the bed, sliding off slowly, trying not to wake Saya. The girl stayed sleeping, though her face furrowed, troubled as her mother's body heat left her alone. Rin knelt on the floor beside the bed and bowed as Sesshomaru slid the door open and stepped silently into her room.

"Welcome home, Lord Sesshomaru. Rin is glad to see you." Rin greeted him, craning her neck to be able to smile at him from the floor. Her mate's face was hidden by the shadows, but from his stance, Rin knew he wasn't at ease. She asked, "You are troubled?"

"I must leave today," he answered, remaining where he was, distant and obscured by the remaining dark.

"But you've only just returned!" Rin fought to keep her voice from revealing how desperate she was for him to stay, if only for one night. She had finished the mysterious, bitter brew that the goddess Koeru had provided for her. Now she needed to take him to bed with her to see if the goddess's words proved true.

"We must not speak now," Sesshomaru told her. He gestured toward Saya, curled up and sleeping peacefully.

"A messenger arrived and invited us to Lord Shimofuri's wedding in Sobadzue." Rin announced without preamble. She gazed at Sesshomaru, willing him to move closer to her, anything so that she might see his face, his golden eyes. "Rin would very much like to go."

"I have already heard of this," Sesshomaru replied, his voice stilted in a way that Rin interpreted as guarded. "And that is where I must go. You cannot come with me."

"I was asked to go," Rin insisted, allowing her irritation to show and her voice to grow a little louder and stronger.

Sesshomaru stepped forward then; the light fell on his face. Rin's heart picked up, her breath jumpstarted. She tried to lower her eyes to hide her reaction from him, unsure of how the inuyoukai would interpret it. Would he think it was anger with him for denying her the right to go when it reality she only felt the thrill of his presence again, at last. If Saya woke up Sesshomaru would be forced to stay even longer, his daughter would never allow him to leave without visiting with him first.

He knelt close to Rin, letting their knees touch. He hadn't closed the door behind him, a fact that annoyed Rin. Sesshomaru stared at her frankly, his golden eyes narrowed slightly, examining her as carefully as Saya had inspected her gift from the kitsune. "Why do you wish to go?" he asked. "Who would watch over Saya?"

"Your wife is a good caretaker, is she not?" Rin demanded in a whisper, challenging him, "Saya will be safe here."

She was surprised when Sesshomaru's face rippled with displeasure, even disgust. "That is not acceptable. You are not leaving this palace, Rin. You will not leave Saya."

Rin paused as she read the truth behind her mate's reaction and smiled slyly, "Lord Sesshomaru is afraid for Rin. Afraid of letting her see Lord Shimofuri at the wedding." She reached out and cupped his cheek with one hand, then stroked the twin lines over his cheeks. "I would never leave Lord Sesshomaru."

"I must attend the wedding," Sesshomaru told her, pulling out of her touch and staring into the depths of her room, "but you will not accompany me."

"Please," Rin grabbed his hand and squeezed it between her own, trying one final time to sway him, "I never see Lord Sesshomaru anymore. He is only coming and going. I miss him, Saya misses him. Please, stay with us a night?"

After a pause Sesshomaru gave a small, incremental nod of his head. "I will stay for one night," he looked her carefully in the eye then as he went on, "but you will not leave Saya and you will not come with me to Shimofuri's wedding. Do you agree?"

Rin bowed, "Yes, I agree."

A small voice silenced them and turned their attention instantly to the abandoned futon where Saya had sat halfway up and asked, "Mama?" she rubbed her eyes, but before she'd sufficiently cleared them her nose had already told her what was happening. She sat bolt upright and grinned, crawling out of the covers and heading toward Sesshomaru. "Father!"

Sesshomaru shifted slightly, turning his knees more to face Saya. His daughter smacked into his side and wrapped her short arms around his waist, burying her nose into his haori like a puppy nuzzling its mother's teat. Sesshomaru touched her head, stroking her hair.

Rin watched their interaction with a thick, swelling pride. She had often worried as Saya had grown that Sesshomaru would be repelled by his daughter's identity as a hanyou, but so far Saya was undisputedly his favorite daughter, in spite of her weakness as a half-human. Would Saya continue to be Sesshomaru's favored daughter as Hanone grew? Would a son from Ginrei usurp Saya in Sesshomaru's affections? Rin had ceased worrying about her own position in Sesshomaru's heart—though wrangling with the idea of his physical union with Ginrei remained painful—she still felt the need to prove her worth to him, and perhaps through her, Saya as well.

"Will Father stay with Mama and me tonight?" Saya asked, peering up at Sesshomaru with his same wide, shining gold eyes.

Sesshomaru's clawed, powerful hand had yet to cease moving over Saya's head and through her white hair. Though he returned her gaze directly, it was with his usual hidden emotion. A stranger would've thought that Sesshomaru was cold and unaffectionate, but to Rin, a longtime watcher of the inuyoukai ruler's stoicism, he was transparent while he was with Saya. The tiny pinching of the corners of his eyes, the warmth in them, the slackness of his lips and jaw, all revealed his ease in the situation, his comfort and attachment to the child in his lap with her arms wrapped around his middle.

"I will stay," he told Saya and, for the space of a single eye blink, he smiled down at her.

"Thank you, Father!" Saya hugged him tighter, squeezing.

* * *

By midday Sesshomaru knew that, in spite of being gone from Jouka and Ginrei's scent for several days, it hadn't been long enough. The palace continued to be tainted with Ginrei's tantalizing scent, torturing his body and then, slowly, his mind as well. Sesshomaru purposefully avoided Ginrei, and she seemed to do likewise.

Sesshomaru spent the day following his daughters through their lessons. While Rin taught them how to write, Sesshomaru lingered in the back, listening and watching. He enjoyed her attention to detail, her intelligence and diligence as she coached Hanone and Saya. To distract from the unending sexual desire lingering in the back of his mind, and trying to infect his body, Sesshomaru allowed himself to consider his own days as a pup. The smell of his mother's skin, the sound of his father's voice, the first time he had felt the brush in his hand when a monkey youkai had tried to teach him the calligraphy that his daughters were learning now.

When Hanone, as usual, couldn't hold the brush as well as the dexterous Saya, Rin shushed the whimpering inuyoukai girl and molded her young fingers around the brush again, gently and patiently. "That is how to hold it," she took hold of Hanone's wrist and began to draw a complicated character, "And this is your grandfather's name."

Saya stopped her painting and sat up; trying to read what Rin was helping Hanone create. Her mouth opened and then closed, her face screwed up for a moment. "Mama, I want to draw that one…"

As soon as she was done with Hanone, Rin reached to Saya and began to help her as well. Saya accepted the guidance, staring at the paper as Rin pushed her wrist around. She was absorbing the marks from the page like a sponge. She would probably retain them until her next lesson and then, while Rin helped Hanone again, she would regurgitate them without being asked to. Sesshomaru had seen the behavior before and could recall doing it himself. Though he didn't know it, Hanone would begin to do the same, but in a year or so. Her development was slower because she was pureblooded. Sesshomaru had progressed at the same speed as Hanone, though he couldn't remember it.

Jaken arrived and took the girls out into the field to let them play. Outside of the classroom Saya and Hanone were more equal. Hanone was roughly as fast as Saya, though she was less coordinated. The girls had learned to taunt Jaken in games of tag that the toad could never win. If Jaken came too close to one of the sisters the other would run in and try to distract the toad. Jaken, an unwilling pawn in the game, spent most of his time huffing and shouting at them, trying to get them to pick flowers daintily the way Rin had as a child.

Sesshomaru sat on the verandah with Rin, watching the children and the reluctant Jaken, playing. For a long time they sat in companionable silence, and then Rin started speaking, asking a question, "Sesshomaru," she began, quietly and very informally, "are you still afraid that I would leave you for Shimofuri?"

The desire to turn and look at her was overwhelming, but Sesshomaru resisted. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Is it Saya then? Are you afraid of leaving Saya here with—"

The rustling sound of robes, and the steady beat of another individual's footsteps reached Sesshomaru's ears and he made a curt gesture to silence Rin just as Ginrei stepped onto the verandah. She remained standing, staring out at the field where Hanone, Saya, and Jaken were playing, and then moved forward and took her place between Rin and Sesshomaru—a bold action that startled both Rin and Sesshomaru. She sat so close to Sesshomaru that her thigh, plump, strong, and healthy, pressed against his own briefly.

Uncomfortable, Sesshomaru shifted away from her and, somehow, managed to keep his face expressionless. "Ginrei," he greeted her, coldly.

"Husband," Ginrei replied. There was an undertone to her single word that Sesshomaru identified as bitterness, perhaps even outright anger. Normally she suppressed such emotions, or she had since she'd conceived and given birth to Hanone. She was a properly raised wife, docile, pretty, and intelligent, like a well-trained dog or beast of burden. She served an important duty, to bear his heirs, an honorable position, but Sesshomaru had acquired ignobly, like a thief. Ginrei had every reason to be irritable with him, but generally she hadn't been, a fact that Sesshomaru appreciated, even worshipped her for…

Her scent was rich, beautiful; exquisite…unbidden, memories of their physical joining attacked him. The feel of her smooth, strong skin, the power in her limbs when she pushed against him and fought against him, asserting her own dominance. Her claws had torn over his skin, drawing out his own blood, a thing he hadn't scented or seen in years. Unlike Rin, who was by her human nature fragile, Ginrei for all her docility was vicious, a vixen when she was in heat. When Sesshomaru bit her and drew blood, tasting her like the wild, predatory animal he was, she returned the favor eagerly, heedless of pain. Her wounds would heal within a few hours, leaving no trace at all…Rin scarred comparatively and she could bear the wound for weeks.

Without realizing it, Sesshomaru found himself staring at Ginrei's profile as she stared at Saya, Hanone, and Jaken in the field. Her hair was a different shade from his own, silvered rather than purely white like an albino's, but her eyes were a blue-silver, different from his golden. She had white stripes over her cheeks, one per cheek. She had passed on her silver eye color and her white stripes to Hanone, making their daughter look unmistakably like her.

Ginrei's gaze slid slowly toward him and then narrowed bitterly as she turned her entire head toward him. Her hair, worn long and flowing over her shoulders like a misty waterfall, fell forward, encircling her face. "Husband," she said, biting the words out, "I wish to speak with you."

"Then speak," he ordered, turning away from her when he heard Rin move, her robes rustling minutely. She was probably leaning forward, trying to listen to Ginrei's words, to the whole exchange.

"We agreed before Hanone was born that she would be _my heir,"_ Ginrei said, growling. "But now you do everything you can to keep her from me." Her voice had changed with the last words, wavering, as if she were about to cry.

The quiver of her mouth and chin somehow intensified his lust. He fought to keep his hands in his lap, to keep them from reaching out to Ginrei and pawing at her hair, moving it away from her neck. The smooth skin there was inviting, taunting. The taste of her blood—

"Please," Ginrei said, leaning closer to him slightly. Her eyes had softened, as had the lines in her face. She too was feeling the desire, uncontrollable, energy-sapping. Her hand moved in her lap and reached for him, brushing his thigh. "You promised me, Husband. You put it in writing."

Her touch sent a thrill through him, set his heart hammering, and reached into his loins, flushing his body with heat. Sesshomaru flinched away from her and got to his feet as if she'd threatened him rather than aroused him. Glancing toward Rin, who stared up at him with thinned lips and pain brewing in her pained eyes, Sesshomaru turned and left both women alone on the verandah. He retreated to his own room and, as he opened the door, felt his hands shaking.

Sesshomaru sat in the farthest corner from the door, focusing on taking deep breaths to calm his body and still his desire. It was moderately effective, but when he heard and felt the tread of a woman's footsteps on the floor in the hallway, his thoughts splintered apart and his body burned anew. He watched the door with the eyes of a feral animal, ready to attack Ginrei if she had followed him.

The woman that opened the door was not Ginrei—it was Rin.

Sesshomaru restrained himself as she entered, closed the door, and bowed on to floor several feet away. "Lord Seshomaru," she addressed him in a high, bright voice.

"Rin," he breathed her name in a husky, deep tone that was more demanding than pleading, "Will you stay with me?"

She sat up and gave him a small, coy smile. "Of course, my lord. I am here only to serve you." Sesshomaru caught the strain and hurt in her only with part of his mind, the last sane part of him. He gave it little thought as he attacked her, laying his hands over her body.

Almost like a child, Rin clung to him as he pulled and ripped at her obi, her kimono and her under robe. He lacked even the faintest semblance of control and didn't bother carrying her to the bed. He pushed her down into her own discarded kimono and covered her with his body, burying his nose in her hair and her neck, drawing in her scent. He combed his clawed fingers through her hair, loosening and then destroying the elaborate hairstyle she'd worn that day. Rin worked her fingers into his haori and hakama, untying things, exposing his chest: wide, carved and shaped by muscle.

Sesshomaru panted in her ear, his breath hot and wet. His hands moved over her skin, and then he raked her lightly with his claws. His breathing became a continuous low growl. He pressed his hips against hers and watched her expression out of the corner of his eye as she felt his erection. When she wrapped her arms around his chest and lifted her legs, inviting him in, Sesshomaru discarded foreplay and composure and grabbed Rin around the waist, turning her over onto her stomach. He would enter her from behind, a carnal position that gave him control, power and dominance.

As her heat wrapped around him, Sesshomaru pulled on her hips and forced her into a sitting arrangement with her back against his chest. He was able to duck his head down and bite her shoulders in that position as he began thrusting, hard and fast.

Rin gnashed her teeth together and leaned into him, letting him support her. He had been too quick, too rough—but she knew why. Ginrei affected him physically, though there was no emotion between them there was intense desire, a kind that she, as a human without inuyoukai hormones and pheromones, couldn't compete with. Sesshomaru suffered to hold himself back for her sake—she would give of herself, as she always had, to help him.

* * *

They had tired of playing tag at last. The half-sisters sat in the new, cool spring grass as the sun gradually fell toward the horizon in the west. Long before sunset the mountains in the distance would swallow the sun, hiding it before it was reborn the next day in a flash of brilliant light. It was a process that the girls barely noticed or remarked on. They were too young to consider the cosmos just yet, though the colors of the falling sun were eye-catching. Golds, oranges, yellows in the sky, and on the few thin clouds, pink linings.

But they were not turned outward, currently. Their quest was internal on this early evening. As usual Saya was the leader, having the most to say and the largest vocabulary to say it with.

With her clawed fingers, Saya riffled through her sister's hair, exploring the texture. "Your hair is softer than mine."

Hanone watched Saya's hands as they rubbed over the strands of her white hair. "Really?"

Saya nodded importantly, "We're different, you and me." She let go of Hanone's hair and screwed up her face for a second, deep in thought. "It isn't just your hair," she concluded, whisperingly, "It's your eyes, your ears and your mouth too!"

Alarmed, Hanone lifted her plump, short fingers up to her mouth and poked inside. At the same time she tried to talk, garbling the words, "My mouth?"

"Your teeth," Saya clarified, enunciating the word, "You have sharp teeth."

Hanone still had her hands in her mouth, exploring like a baby as she mumbled around them, "Really?"

"You look like Lady Ginrei." Saya announced.

"Really?" Hanone asked again, though she had no idea who _Lady Ginrei_ was. In her mind _Mama, Ma, _and _Mother_ were Ginrei's name. Titles were given to Rin and Sesshomaru, a mysterious couple that somehow meant something to her mother. Hanone was too young to grasp the meanings behind relationships just yet. She understood that she was supposed to call Sesshomaru _father_, but the title was meaningless to her. She had yet to comprehend that that was how she and Saya were sisters, and that Sesshomaru was responsible for half of her heritage. Sesshomaru was a curious creature because she was instructed to call him _father_ but she heard others use two other, different titles when speaking to him. _Lord Sesshomaru,_ and _Husband_, which was what her mother called him. To Hanone _father-Lord-Sesshomaru-Husband_ was a frightening creature that bullied her and separated her from her mother. Yet, to Saya, the same being was reverent and awe-inspiring, worthy of worship.

Just as she had trouble with her lessons, Hanone couldn't grasp interpersonal relationships yet.

"Yeah," Saya prattled on, "You have Lady Ginrei's face." She reached out and traced the white stripes on Hanone's cheeks.

Hanone at last pulled her fingers out of her mouth and smacked at Saya's hands, pushing them away. "Don't."

"Sorry," Saya apologized quickly and then, self-consciously, brought her fingers up to touch the crescent moon on her forehead. "Mama says I look like Father."

"Father," Hanone echoed, scowling. She looked toward the verandah where _father_ had been sitting earlier and, for the first time, noticed that her mother was sitting there watching them, alone. She brightened up and waved, "Hi Mama!"

Saya saw Ginrei and grinned. Taking Hanone's hand inside her own, she hauled her younger sister up onto her feet. "Come on; let's go talk to Lady Ginrei."

They hurtled over the ground together, heading toward the verandah. Jaken shouted irritably behind them and also started for the verandah, grumbling about the girls' unpredictable behavior.

As the little girls flowed up the steps, Ginrei smiled warmly at them. Hanone moved immediately into her lap, hugging Ginrei and rubbing her cheek against her. Ginrei shifted and held Hanone protectively in a loose embrace. Saya stayed a small foot away, smiling widely as she watched Hanone and Ginrei interact.

Jaken arrived finally, panting, "Is it time for them to go back inside now, Lady Ginrei?"

Ginrei ignored him, focusing only on Hanone. She touched Hanone's face, brushing the hair out of her daughter's eyes. "Are you hungry, Hanone? Are you tired? Do you want to take a nap with me?"

Hanone nodded and then closed her eyes, content and at peace in Ginrei's embrace.

Saya piped up, "Lady Ginrei—my sister looks like you do, but I don't look like my mama, I look like Father."

Jaken huffed, hopping to climb the stairs, "Silly girl! Don't worry about such nonsense! You should just be honored to look like Lord Sesshomaru!"

Ginrei started to rise to her feet and turn to walk back inside, all the while carrying Hanone, who was as good as sleeping in her arms. "Come inside Saya, Jaken's tired of watching over you for today."

Saya followed Ginrei obediently inside the palace, through the halls, and into the tearoom. After Ginrei had settled Hanone on one of the seats and then vanished to seek out a maid to bring them some food, Saya sat beside Hanone, watching her. Hanone sat in a slouched position, her eyes lidded and half-closed with fatigue. Hanone napped at least twice as much as Saya did, another difference between them developmentally. Hanone remained babyish, Saya was fast maturing, growing even faster than a human child would've at her age.

Something troubled Saya, in a way she couldn't name because she hadn't lived long enough or learned enough to interpret it. Her sense of smell was keen thought it was only half of what Hanone, Ginrei, and Sesshomaru's olfactory capabilities were, and with her nose she'd realized that Hanone not only looked like Ginrei, she smelled like her too. At first this could've been explained by their close proximity, but as time went onward, Saya had realized that proximity didn't matter. Hanone was Ginrei's daughter, not Rin's. And yet they _were_ sisters, Saya's nose told her that they shared Sesshomaru's scent between them.

No one had ever explained the intricacies of the adult relationships to Saya. She didn't understand that Ginrei and Sesshomaru were married to produce pureblooded offspring. She didn't understand that Rin and Sesshomaru were forever separated in this way genetically—but she could _smell it. _Sesshomaru and Rin were not just different individuals, they were different _species._ Saya's mother was the same species as the maids while Sesshomaru, Ginrei, Hanone, and some of the gaurds all shared the same species scent. At the same time, Saya was able to realize that her own scent, left on the bed sheets in the morning, in the bathwater, and even in her urine, was _neither_ of these species scents. In fact in Jouka she was the only being with such a scent.

That singularity, that uniqueness, fascinated and troubled her at once. These differences spun inside Saya's mind, propelling her to search the features of the adults around her, and now Hanone too.

She leaned forward and whispered at Hanone, "I don't smell like you do, Sister."

Hanone let out a small sound, a confused whimper and met her sister's gaze wearily. "What?"

"I smell different from you—and Father and Mama, and Lady Ginrei. No one will tell me why."

Hanone's mind was too young and simple to grasp what Saya was saying. She closed her eyes and tried to drift back into her comforting, dozing sleep. Saya watched her sister patiently, thinking hard. Aside from her parents, Hanone was the closest creature her scent resembled.

Saya scooted closer to Hanone and wrapped her arm around her sister's shoulders, acting as a pillow. Hanone accepted her touch and nuzzled into her. After a moment Saya closed her eyes too, enjoying the closeness of her sister's body, the sameness of their scent and of their similar body sizes. The adults were complex and mysterious, but Hanone was simple and comforting. Saya treasured that.

She let a wide smile cross her face, a thing she usually curtailed, "I love you, Sister."

Hanone made a small grunting noise in answer and continued to doze against Saya's neck and shoulder as peacefully as she had with Ginrei.

* * *

A/N: well that's all for now folks. Hope I didn't offend anyone…eek!


	6. The Wedding

A/N: To anonymous **Anya**: Am I being too harsh with him, you think? You can be honest, I'm not offended. It's a tough situation he's in, one that he cooked for himself though. I had a lot of readers review and tell me how much they felt Sess was terrible in _Runaway._ And yes, as a writer and as a reader…well sadly drama is my job. _Return_ however should be less heart-wrenching in the way that _Runaway _was with its stickiness and the unsatisfying compromise that Rin and Sess ultimately had to make. Anyway, I just can't wait to torture him. I hope it doesn't bother you too much, because I definitely don't want to do that. Thank you for reviewing!

Disclaimer: I do not own them

Last Chapter: Aojiroi Jinsoku, a fox came to visit Rin and Ginrei and he invited them to Shimofuri's wedding. His real goal was to invite Sesshomaru. He also gave Saya a "magical" white stone. Sesshomaru returned. We had a lemon of sorts. And this between Saya and a sleepy Hanone: _She let a wide smile cross her face, a thing she usually curtailed, "I love you, Sister."_

* * *

**The Wedding**

Saya palmed her magical white stone, gripping it and closing her eyes, imagining that she had become a little bird, one of the songbirds that serenaded her from the treetops during her afternoon playtimes. Saya and Hanone had stuck out their arms and ran around, trying to fly by hopping into the air and running as fast as they could. The fun ended when Hanone, ever the clumsy half of their equation, stumbled on a clump of dirt and took a tumble. The little inuyoukai girl had risen sobbing and bleeding from a cut inside her mouth. Ginrei and Jaken had swooped down on her instanteously, ignoring Saya when she clamored, trying to see whether Hanone was going to live through the event with her own eyes.

The scent of her little sister's blood stayed with her, troubling her young, otherwise carefree mind.

Rin was behind her, pulling on Saya's robes, trying to fasten it securely closed. A maid stood by, slumped with the lazy, exasperated posture of boredom. The maid held a bright, honey-yellow obi that shone richly when it caught the light. Saya's kimono was fancier than usual, a dark blue fabric with white flowers embroidered over its surface.

"Mama," Saya asked, opening her eyes and sighing when she realized that she was still herself, not a happy, chirping songbird that could fly and flit between the trees. "How does this magic stone work?"

"Jinsoku-sama told you that you have to find out for yourself." Rin finished tugging on the kimono and backed away, allowing the maid to kneel and wrap the elaborate obi around Saya's middle.

Saya watched the maid though the maid gave no effort to meet Saya's curious, questioning gaze. She fidgeted, impatient to have the obi tied and all of the dressing rituals finished. "Why am I dressing up, Mama?"

"Because you are going to travel with your father to visit your relatives. Someone is getting married in the Middle Lands. He's a friend of mine, Saya." Rin moved around to face Saya, exchanging places with the bored maid. She knelt again to be on level with her daughter, "I can't come with you," she said, solemnly.

Saya cocked her head, perplexed by this news. "What?"

"Your father doesn't want me to go with you." Rin leaned forward, whispering playfully, "Your father is afraid that I will like his cousin—the man that's getting married—more than I like him."

Saya smiled, accepting that whatever Rin was talking about it was apparently ridiculous. Rin's tone and the silly smile on her lips made it plain enough. But still… "Why can't you come Mama? I want you to come with me and Father." She paused for a moment as a fresh thought jumped into her mind, "What's _cousin?_"

"Listen Saya," Rin moved her face close to Saya's and mother and daughter brushed their noses together. When Rin spoke Saya was so close that she could smell her mother's breath including the last meal she'd had and the green tea she'd drank with it. "You are going to be my spy. Your father will introduce you to everyone and there will be good food for you to eat there—you'll have a lot of fun with your father there."

"But why can't you come?" Saya demanded again, at last beginning to lose her patience. She rubbed the white stone between her palms, waiting as Rin thought up an acceptable answer.

"The way that your father travels," Rin explained, slowly, "It makes Mama sick. Your father thinks that it won't bother you the same way. But while you are away Saya, listen to me carefully—I want you to be a very good girl. Don't ever leave your father even for an instant. Stay with him at all times, don't let any of the other people there lure you away, even if there are other children to play with. Will you promise me that you'll be a good girl and never leave your father's side, even for a moment?"

Saya nodded, her face set in a serious, even grave expression. "I promise Mama."

The maid had finished and excused herself quietly, walking out of the dressing room and leaving the sliding door standing open. Rin and Saya followed after her and eventually reached the front entryway to the palace. Sesshomaru was standing outside on the stone pathway, dressed and ready, waiting.

It was already nearly midday, the soonest that the entire household could have Saya, Rin, Sesshomaru, Hanone, and Ginrei all dressed, bathed, and fed. The day was overcast. The clouds were heavy, a deep, threatening gray. The whereabouts of the sun were completely unknown, no one spot of the sky appeared brighter than the next.

Ginrei, Hanone, and Jaken had also assembled to see Sesshomaru off. Jaken was griping about Lord Shimofuri and the suddenness of the wedding. The real reason for his complaining was the fact that Sesshomaru hadn't chosen him as a traveling companion. The toad liked to think of himself as a retainer while everyone else considered him a babysitter and servant as well as a pain in the neck.

"At least this foolish business isn't happening in the winter! That would be the last straw for all of us, putting up with that Shimofuri's trouble…"

As Sesshomaru's wife, Ginrei was present, holding Hanone in her arms. Her face was creased with dislike. She had her eyes downcast as Rin arrived with Saya.

"Saya," Sesshomaru called out to her, lifting up one hand, palm upwards, "Do you wish to come with me?"

"Mama says I have to," Saya replied and, embarrassedly, Rin bowed and murmured something unintelligible.

Sesshomaru glanced toward Rin and his lips quirked, moving fractionally into what was a sort of microscopic smile. "I see. If you do not wish to accompany me, that is acceptable as well."

The truth of the matter was that Sesshomaru would've happily taken both Rin and Saya with him, except for the fact that he was traveling to _Shimofuri's _wedding. Shimofuri held a longstanding grudge against Sesshomaru, for good reason. On several occasions and for great lengths of time, Sesshomaru had held Shimofuri's beloved sister Tsukiyume hostage. Although Sesshomaru wouldn't view it as fair, Shimofuri had been the one to reveal Ginrei's existence to Rin, causing her to leave him while she was still pregnant with Saya. He had done it to get a sort of revenge on Sesshomaru, to bring him down a notch, when Sesshomaru hadn't returned Tsukiyume when he'd said he would. Now Sesshomaru despised and refused to trust Shimofuri in the slightest way. Even bringing Saya was a risk—though as his _hanyou_ daughter she served little courtly interest, but the risk was outweighed by the benefits.

Having a companion with Sesshomaru would make him less assailable. It would also act as a fine excuse to make his visit a very short stay. Bringing his child was a show of good faith as well, saying without words that he was comfortable enough, powerful enough, and trusting enough that he would bring one of his daughters to the wedding. But there were other more genuine reasons for exposing Saya to the inuyoukai clan. If Saya were to capture positive attention it could one day save her if something happened to Rin and Sesshomaru. Another family could adopt her and save her from the homelessness that Inuyasha had faced. Looking as she did, an almost identical replica of Sesshomaru, would make her a curiosity to them, an interest that might keep her from being killed someday.

Acceptance from humans would not be Saya's main concern in life; rather it would be about getting inuyoukai to accept her. It was the inuyoukai that were more likely to kill her. Other inuhanyou were spared and accepted within the clan, like Shimofuri's own half-sister Tsukiyume for example, it was possible that Saya would be as well.

Beyond those reasons there was the simple fact that, driven away from Jouka by Ginrei's taunting scent, Sesshomaru actually felt the loss of his family, as strange as it was.

Making up her mind, Saya hopped playfully forward and set her tiny clawed hand inside Sesshomaru's larger, stronger one. "I'll come with you, Father."

Sesshomaru and Saya left Jouka palace behind and began their journey, side by side. Except for the difference in age and for the obvious fact that she was his daughter, having Saya walking at his side was similar to traveling with Rin when she had been a child. The old habits of carefully searching the horizon for danger and scenting the wind more regularly than he would've done while traveling alone returned to him swiftly and with surprising ease. He chose his trails now not for speed, but for accessibility. If it was too rocky or too steep than Sesshomaru avoided it, even if the easier path was longer by days.

And, to shorten the journey immensely, there was always the option of traveling by a sort of teleportation. Jumping through distances took a great deal of his energy and couldn't be done limitlessly, but Sesshomaru was able to eat up the miles in this way quite effectively if he wished. It was a method he usually didn't use when he was traveling with Rin because as a human she couldn't tolerate it. When he had used it to transport her more readily out of the Middle Lands before Saya had been born, it had caused Rin to go into premature labor.

He didn't know how it would affect Saya.

The journey, traveling at an easy, slow pace that accommodated Saya, would take upwards of a week. That speed was unacceptable because they would miss the wedding entirely. After three days of steady walking, Saya began to weary of the trip. She dragged her feet exhaustedly, her shoulders sagged, and she kept her eyes downcast and didn't speak at all. They were walking through empty mountain valleys and Saya, unused to the wilderness, found the sights and scents around her overwhelming. By midday on the third day Saya had begun crying silently behind him. She was successful at hiding her tears from Sesshomaru for some time before a back draft brought the scent to him and, alarmed, Sesshomaru stopped mid step.

Saya halted as well, sniffling pathetically. "Father?" her voice was quiet and shaky.

"Saya," Sesshomaru said, "Why are you crying?" He turned around to face her, narrowing his golden eyes as he examined her.

"I don't know," she sobbed and her knees started to tremble but she fought the tantrum and sniffled fiercely, wiping at her tears, trying to hide them, "I'm sorry, Father."

Wordlessly, Sesshomaru knelt and scooped her up into his arms, tucking her body close against his chest and shielding her head between his shoulder and his neck. Saya clung to him tightly, sniffling and closing her eyes.

The world became weightless for a moment and Saya whimpered in her father's arms. Her body tingled, her skin prickled. Her vision covered over, becoming completely white. She clutched frantically at her father's haori but her fists clutched at nothing but cold air.

As abruptly as the weightlessness had taken her, it failed and gravity reasserted itself. The world cleared, as if all of the snow had melted in a single second. Saya sniffled and blinked, looking around at the landscape around her. Before she had closed her eyes and felt her stomach flip flop when gravity left the land had been covered in trees, a dark, foreboding forest in the hidden crevices of the mountains of the Western Lands. Now the world was wide open, green, and flat. Channels of water spread out around her, sun peeked out of the fluffy white clouds up above. Villagers were standing in the watery canals, staring in disbelief at the bizarre inuyoukai that had materialized right before their eyes.

"Are you all right?" Sesshomaru asked her.

Saya squirmed in his arms, unsure of how to answer. "What happened to the trees?"

"Are you all right?" Sesshomaru repeated.

Saya leaned backward to look her father in the eye. She touched his jaws with her hands and poked experimentally at his lips. "Yeah…"

Satisfied, Sesshomaru started to walk forward again, ignoring the villagers and field workers as if they didn't exist at all. "Rest, Saya," he ordered her.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, Saya leaned her head onto his shoulder, pretending to do as he instructed, but actually gazing out at the new world around her. How bizarre that her all-knowing and all-powerful father hadn't noticed the way the world had transformed! Saya thought of the white, magical stone tucked into her obi and smiled.

(A/N: I think I saw an episode where Sesshomaru uses this to catch Rin when she falls while climbing a cliff to find a specific flower or berry that Jaken needs to cure an illness. She cries out his name and he, literally in a way of sorts, comes running to catch her. That's my clearest memory of it though I'm sure he uses it uncountable other times too.)

* * *

Shimofuri had never imagined his wedding before. It had never been one of his fantasies. Like most inuyoukai it had taken him close to a century for him to become fully, physically mature. He spent those long years growing, sleeping, eating, and learning like a child. Though his body may have _appeared_ throughout that time to be mature, in reality he was still too young, a mere puppy. His demonic energy was also a slow-growing thing, a skill to be honed and perfected, as well as a sort of developing muscle. It took nearly a century for any inuyoukai to be considered more than a child in the eyes of the clan. Sexually females came of age more quickly while their male counterparts lagged. Sometimes, even while a male was mature at a hundred years—physically fit and with his demonic powers strengthened to make him a force to be reckoned with—he would remain about as interested in sex as a newborn baby.

At just shy of two hundred years old, Shimofuri was not immature in any sense of the word, but he _was_ a virgin. Being creatures ruled by their senses of smell, inuyoukai mating habits revolved around scent more than sight. Although Shimofuri was perfectly capable of having sex, the chance had never arisen because he was not driven to seek it out. Humans, with such short life spans in which to successfully reproduce, were drawn toward companionship, sex, and as a result procreation from the moment they matured onward. Shimofuri had matured and not felt that drive because it was not imperative that he do it _quickly._ He had centuries in which he could decide to pursue the proper bitch, marry her, and father pups with her.

Shimofuri's missing sexual drive would be switched from _off_ to _on_ as soon as he spent an extended period of time in close scent-contact with an unrelated inuyoukai female of childbearing age. The effect could also be stimulated by a _human_ woman's hormones, though it would probably take a longer time and greater exposure.

One of the awkward conversations he'd had with his uncle before the wedding had been on this matter. Were Amagumori and Shimofuri far enough apart genetically that they could arouse one another? Sasugainu encouraged Shimofuri to eat with his Amagumori and Soeki, to see if the cousins' instinctual urges were roused in the month or so before their wedding. Perhaps not enough time had passed, or more likely Amagumori, Soeki, and Shimofuri were too repulsed by the entire affair to notice any changes, but whatever the case none of them felt anything. Sasugainu insisted that not enough time had passed and it meant little. There would be a consummation for the marriage eventually.

So it was that Shimofuri found himself coerced by his uncle into the private ceremony, dressed in somber blue-black robes and walking beside Amagumori who dressed in white and gold. His cousin was petite, narrow as a rail, swallowed alive by the heavy silk of her elaborate garments. He pitied her as they knelt and exchanged sake. The incense was burned, offerings to appease any watching deities. Shimofuri and Amagumori exchanged prewritten vows to one another in solemn, flowery language.

There were only a dozen other beings present. Soeki was there, barely hiding her deep frown. Unlike her delicate older sister, Soeki was bulkier, filling out her robes much more so than Amagumori ever could. Soeki wore the robes embroidered with the now-extinct Nishiyori family's crest. She was representing the Nishiyori family, from which both the bride and the groom were indirectly or directly descended from. Shimofuri's own father had been a member of the extinct clan. Sasugainu stood near his daughter, wearing symbols for Taikokajin, his deceased sister Shimofuri's mother, and the Middle Lands.

Also in attendance was the clan from the north, though Shimofuri couldn't recognize any of their representatives. Their presence unnerved him—why were they at his wedding? Sasugainu continued to have ties with the clan in the far north, holding the Itou province for Arasoizuki's son and his widow, but that hardly explained how they were legitimately present.

Sesshomaru had come too, though Shimofuri hadn't managed to see the lord of the Western Lands before the wedding ceremony had pulled him away from his guests. While the visitors from the clan in the north were illegitimate guests at Shimofuri's wedding—they weren't related to him close enough to warrant them being there—Sesshomaru was not. Sesshomaru was related to Shimofuri through his mother Taikokajin. Sesshomaru's father and Shimofuri's grandfather had been first cousins. Such a lofty, powerful relative was expected at such a wedding, though usually Sesshomaru would've ignored the invitation without a second thought. Since his pact with Shimofuri and Sasugainu several years previous, after the civil war in the Middle Lands, Sesshomaru was obliged to at least pretend he had a social interest in his distant cousin.

After the ceremony had passed, the bride and groom exited the shrine and headed into the gardens outside on the palace grounds. Their feet fell softly over the hard wood floors, almost reverently. After they had exited the guests followed suit and the dynamic of the wedding changed. Human servants appeared; inuyoukai guards flanked the edges of the procession, stiff but bored by the entire affair. Food was carried out on platters. There was less food present than what would've been available at a human wedding because the inuyoukai in attendance ate far less. The food that was served was also of a different kind. Meat that had been barely cooked, unrecognizable greens and vases of drinks that, if a human took the time to examine them closely, they would discover it was not a red fruit punch…

Shimofuri and Amagumori sat on a small raised platform among the blooming trees, the green, pollen-rich grasses, and the neatly pruned bushes. Sasugainu brought Amagumori a plate of food and Tsukiyume materialized from the crowd to do the same for her brother. Neither bride or groom bothered with their food. Guests began making their way one group at a time to face the new couple, presenting congratulations, blessings, and gifts.

The odd visitors from the north were some of the first to present themselves before Shimofuri and Amagumori. Shimofuri scrutinized their faces and their demeanors as they bowed before him. The leader was introduced as Kanseninu, a lanky sly fellow with shifty, narrowed gray eyes. There were several other representatives from the northern inuyoukai clan with him but none of them apparently warranted an introduction. Kanseninu offered a gift of swords forged in the north. The names and abilities flowed together into one inside Shimofuri's mind and he thanked them without meaning it, confused and disturbed by it all. He watched Kanseninu and the rest of the northerners from his place on the platform, wondering over their intentions.

Amagumori sat at his side with her head bowed, her food untouched. She murmured only what was completely necessary of her throughout their exchanges. She said, "Thank you," and "I am honored to have you here." She would be of no use to him in observing Kanseninu and the northerners. It was impossible to ask his uncle as well, Sasugainu was probably the reason why the northerners were present at all. Frustrated and alone, Shimofuri summoned his sister between greeting guests and receiving gifts, asking her quietly to observe his uninvited guests.

The northerners were unlikely to notice or care about a small, short hanyou girl following them. Because she was part human they would also underestimate her acute hearing. There was a high possibility that they would reveal themselves and their plans unwittingly.

Distracted by that potential threat, Shimofuri almost failed to notice it when Sesshomaru appeared before his platform, stiff and cold. In fact he didn't note the powerful inuyoukai lord until Amagumori said, "Lord Sesshomaru," and ducked her head deeply in a bow.

Startled, Shimofuri glanced up and at once his eyes widened. He had never seen Sesshomaru's daughters before, but the sight of the small, timid child at the powerful lord's side was baffling, almost incomprehensible. Of course Shimofuri hadn't known Sesshomaru some fifteen or twenty years previously when he'd traveled with Rin and Jaken constantly at his side, depending on him.

"Lord Sesshomaru," Shimofuri stammered. For a moment, in his surprise, he almost bowed out of habit, but then his dislike for Sesshomaru returned, pressing into his mind. His young lips thinned, compressing.

Sesshomaru didn't bow either. "Shimofuri." Amazingly, displaying his boldness, Sesshomaru didn't bother to address him properly at all. "You have married at last."

Shimofuri scowled for a moment and then buried the expression when he thought he detected a trace of amusement glowing in Sesshomaru's golden eyes. He fought to control himself, to stay calm and collected. Slowly, Shimofuri smiled, finding the perfect way to dig at Sesshomaru's confidence. "Yes, I did. But enough about me, Lord Sesshomaru—how is the lovely Lady Rin doing?"

Sesshomaru's jaw squared, but otherwise any further signs of Shimofuri's words were hidden beneath his careful, cultivated surface. "She is well."

For the first time throughout their tortuous ceremony, Amagumori spoke up with more than just regurgitated, traditional dialogue. "Lord Sesshomaru has a beautiful daughter."

The little girl at his side was a tiny, mirror image of her proud, powerful father. Dressed in blue and yellow, the little girl clung to Sesshomaru's pant leg and stared at Shimofuri and Amagumori with wide, golden eyes.

"Her name is Saya," Sesshomaru said, blandly.

"A beautiful name for a beautiful child." Amagumori smiled, watching Saya intently.

As if he considered Amagumori's curiosity a threat, Sesshomaru shifted, moving one leg forward to obscure Saya from the couple's view. "I congratulate you both on your marriage." He used formal, respectful language to say this, though his tone was not genuine and he made no effort to hide it.

"You've brought us no gift, Sesshomaru?" Shimofuri interjected, demandingly. He flared his canines once like a true dog, losing his patience and revealing his youth in the outburst. He had forgotten to give Sesshomaru a title, a severe mistake when it was taken into account that not only was Sesshomaru his elder, he was also far more powerful and experienced.

"You will address me properly," Sesshomaru said, narrowing his eyes dangerously, "or I will kill you."

Shimofuri paused for a moment, growing cautious. "My apologies, Lord Sesshomaru. You have come to my wedding without a gift. Perhaps I might ask your lovely daughter to remain here and grace us with her presence. She is hanyou after all, I'm sure my sister would enjoy her company greatly as Lady Rin enjoyed Tsukiyume's company so much…"

Amagumori, alarmed by her new husband's behavior, stared uncomprehendingly at Shimofuri, her mouth hanging ajar.

Saya spoke, repeating a word that she had never heard before, "_Hanyou?"_

Sesshomaru ignored Amagumori's gaping and Saya's question, "I'm afraid that will not be possible."

"Why is that, Lord Sesshomaru?' Shimofuri pressed, bitterly, "She is hanyou. She could hardly mean anything to you—just as you know that my sister means nothing to me, which was why I allowed you to keep her for so long as a hostage…"

"Ridiculous," Sesshomaru snapped, turning his back on Shimofuri defiantly, "I will take my leave of you now."

Shimofuri snarled silently at Sesshomaru's backsides, "Yes, you do that. Run back to the Western Lands and hide in your mountains…"

As Sesshomaru walked away Saya, still clinging to his pant leg, peered back over her shoulder and sniffed audibly at the newlyweds, perplexed and intrigued at once.

* * *

A human servant carrying an empty platter drew too close to Sesshomaru and collided with him, falling flat onto the thick, green grass. The servant, a woman, muttered apologies and hurriedly got to her feet. Her hands shook as she reached for the platter she'd dropped. Sesshomaru watched her, unaffected by their collision. His main concern was for Saya, he had turned slightly to shield her with his body. Saya peeked past his leg anyway, watching the servant's clumsy struggle.

Just as Sesshomaru lost interest in the servant girl and turned his eyes away from her, her felt a small tugging sensation and immediately looked back, startled. The servant was hurrying away, but there was something in her hand that Sesshomaru hadn't seen before—he distinctly recalled her hands being empty when she'd collided with him and fallen. Yet as she scurried away with her knees partially bent, as if she were trying to physically shrink herself to hide from the world, Sesshomaru saw that in one hand she had a thin, black object. A knife? A rock? The other hand was below the tray, supporting it, but Sesshomaru paused, wondering why the incident seemed important…

Had the servant girl really tugged on his hair? Had he imagined it? Had Saya actually done it instead?

"Father," Saya called, nuzzling into his pant leg and letting out a long, stretching yawn, "What is _hanyou?"_

_That_ was not a question he wanted to answer, not even remotely.

"Are you hungry, Saya?" he asked, motioning toward the table nearby, covered with half-full platters of raw meat.

Saya pulled away from his pant leg, lifting her head and focusing for a moment on the table and the platters. Then her nose wrinkled slightly and she shook her head. "That's not fish." She turned to look back up at him, her golden eyes wide and curious, "What is _hanyou, _Father? The people at the table called me that."

"Lord Sesshomaru!" A gruff voice interrupted them, making Sesshomaru turn and step in front of Saya, shielding her as he faced his newest assailant. It was Sasugainu, grinning broadly. His eyes were glazed and even from several feet away the stench of alcohol, not just sake but of rice wine, was overwhelming. Very few inuyoukai bothered drinking the intoxicating brew; it was a weakness, a mental impairment. Sesshomaru's face tightened with disgust as he faced the father of the bride—and uncle of the groom.

"Sasugainu," Sesshomaru again revealed his lack of respect for these inuyoukai by failing to give them a proper title. Sasugainu was _older_ than Sesshomaru, but still the powerful lord of the Western Lands saw little reason to tag him with the title of _Lord._

"Have you decided to come back to us, Lord Sesshomaru?" Sasugainu asked, leaning a step too close to Sesshomaru almost leeringly, as if the older inuyoukai were so inebriated that he'd lost his sense of balance.

Sesshomaru took a step backward, using one hand to shift Saya with him, protecting her with his body. "What do you mean?"

"To the clan," Sasugainu grinned, showing his fangs. There was a cruelty in his face that made Sesshomaru's spine stiffen in warning.

"I am here in support of our treaty." Sesshomaru replied, dryly. He allowed himself the luxury of glaring at the other leader, hoping that Sasugainu could be intimidated and forced to leave without an unnecessary exchange of words. He shifted again uncomfortably, all-too aware of his vulnerable daughter standing just behind him. His hand on that side with Saya stayed just barely touching Saya's hair and her head, reassuring himself that she was there.

Sasugainu leaned over to one side, at first looking as if he would stumble and fall over that way, but he didn't. He stayed off-kilter, standing at an angle, peeking at Saya. The harsh, cold grin spread over his face, gleaming wetly. It was like an infection…

"You brought the hanyou," Sasugainu gestured rudely with one clawed hand at Sesshomaru's side. Saya hid when he pointed at her, tucking her small body into Sesshomaru's billowing pant leg as if it were a blanket. "Come out hanyou—I want to see you…!"

Sasugainu came too close for Sesshomaru's comfort and, like an elephant charging to defend her calf, the lord of the Western Lands lashed out with the hand that had been touching Saya for reassurance. His palm connected with Sasugainu's chest, knocking the other inuyoukai backwards. Sasugainu didn't move very far away, in fact his lack of balance was apparently deceiving. He recovered from Sesshomaru's blow quickly and, for a split second, Sesshomaru saw the glazed quality of his greenish eyes vanish, leaving them sharp, shrewd, and cunning.

The expression faded as quickly as Sesshomaru _thought_ he'd seen it and Sasugainu smiled thickly. "I remember what it's like to have young ones," he said, "hold onto your daughters Lord Sesshomaru." The slyness was unmistakable now, the cruelty in his eyes showed through like rocks trapped beneath thinning, melting ice, "You know they just grow up and leave you so fast…"

Sesshomaru didn't bother restraining his glaring now. He even allowed himself to raise one lip, exposing his fangs in unspoken threat. "Indeed. I must be on my way."

"Of course," Sasugainu's grin lost its intelligence, dulling. He lurched away, heading toward the platform where Shimofuri and Amagumori were greeting more guests, receiving more presents.

"Come, Saya." Sesshomaru lowered his hand down to her level, touching her head, feeling her hair. "We are leaving now."

Saya followed him, sticking to her father as closely as lint. She risked looking over her shoulder at the tall, old inuyoukai with the uneven walk and the green eyes that had just spoken with her father. This turned out to be a mistake—the inuyoukai was staring back at her, smirking mischievously.

Saya turned back to face her father's legs and to clutch at his offered hand with a new, fresh fierceness. All of the people she had been exposed to wore the same scents—human and inuyoukai. None of them, except for the woman on the platform, had been friendly with her. Saya was frightened of the males like Sasugainu and Shimofuri, though Amagumori was a neutral ground because she was like Hanone or Lady Ginrei. The wedding had been a blur to her of strangers, frightening and bizarre, like a dream she couldn't escape. She held tightly to her father as if he was her sanity and, during the wedding, he was.

And then another voice came, a female, shouting her father's name. "Lord Sesshomaru! Lord Sesshomaru!"

Sesshomaru halted and Saya tilted outward to see past her father's leg to stare at the newcomer. They had stopped at the edges of the garden in the middle of a stone-pebbled path. A short distance away on the carpet of lush, green grass, a woman had knelt in a deep bow. She was wearing a gray robe with an under robe of pink. The characters on her outer robe were foreign to Saya, unreadable because she was too young to know them. But it wasn't this woman's clothes that caught Saya's eye—it was the fact that she had white dog ears perched atop her head.

Saya's small mouth fell open.

"Lord Sesshomaru," the woman murmured, sounding sad.

"Tsukiyume," Sesshomaru answered her in a gentle voice. "You are well?"

"Not entirely," Tsukiyume's voice had dropped to a whisper that Saya could barely hear, "May I speak with Sesshomaru-sama?"

Saya blinked with bafflement. The strange woman with her black hair pinned up in an elegant style, and with the bizarre white dog ears twitching on top of it all was so different from Lady Ginrei and from Saya's mother—but she spoke to Sesshomaru in the same way that they did when they wanted to coax him into doing something for them. Drawn out by her curiosity, Saya stepped forward to stand directly at her father's side rather than sheltering behind him. She kept one arm wrapped around his leg for comfort and confidence, but she wanted to hear what the strange woman had to say to her father. Wouldn't her mother be pleased with an account of such an amusing, weird woman?

"Be quick." Sesshomaru warned her, giving a small motion with two fingers to signal her to get to her feet. "Your brother has sent you, has he not?"

"No." Tsukiyume shook her head and her ears flattened against her black hair. She looked nervously toward the platform where Shimofuri and Amagumori were seated. "I know you won't believe me, but I'm here against his wishes."

"What is it that you wish to say?" Sesshomaru asked.

"Sasugainu is not himself, Lord Sesshomaru. Something is going on here, but I don't know what. Lady Amagumori is our _cousin_ twice over! Sasugainu is going to take shishi-sama's land from him by killing his own daughter! I'm sure of it…" abruptly Tsukiyume's words faltered and her nostrils flared as she took in the unknown—but _familiar—_scent floating near Sesshomaru. She glanced down and, for the first time, noticed the tiny child at his side, staring out at her.

Sesshomaru nudged Saya behind him again, recapturing Tsukiyume's attention immediately. "It is not impossible for cousins to marry successfully." Sesshomaru concluded, uninterestedly. "Your fears are unfounded and have nothing to do with me."

"Please Lord Sesshomaru," Tsukiyume whispered; stepping even closer to him, "this does affect you as well. Our uncle designed this wedding specifically to get _you_ here…"

Now Sesshomaru stiffened visibly, though he didn't speak and his face didn't change. Saya leaned out again, trying to see Tsukiyume. Her father's leg was a hard pole of tense muscle now and Saya put all of her weight into it, knowing he would support her.

"I've heard him up at night, talking alone to himself in his room like a madman. He doesn't think I can hear him because I'm _just a hanyou,"_ Tsukiyume spat the last word and her eyes flew at once to Saya. When Tsukiyume's brown-orange eyes met with Saya's honey-golden irises the tiny girl ducked back into hiding, pressing herself into Sesshomaru's leg.

"If he has lost his mind than he is no threat," Sesshomaru said, still unimpressed, though Tsukiyume had harnessed his attention well enough.

Tsukiyume's hands shook as she spoke; her words tumbled out in a desperate blur. "My father was a human monk with strong spiritual powers. He passed those powers onto me. When Uncle speaks to himself in his room _he is not alone._ I can feel it in my blood, Sesshomaru-sama. There's a force inside with him. He's conspiring with someone—some_thing_, and he plans to kill you." She closed her eyes, shaking her head fiercely, "I hoped you wouldn't come, it would foil his plans…"

"I am leaving now," Sesshomaru told her somberly, "and your uncle has not killed me."

"He isn't going to fight you!" Tsukiyume hissed. "He knows he would be defeated if he tried to do that outright. It's something else—a poison or a spell…"

"I will not be so easily defeated," Sesshomaru intoned, his eyes narrowing as if Tsukiyume had insulted him rather than tried to help him by warning him. "I defeated Naraku and the panther demon tribe _alone._ Your uncle is not a threat to me."

"Lord Inuyasha helped you defeat Naraku," Tsukiyume objected immediately, trying to poke holes in Sesshomaru's confidence to force him to see the danger she was describing, to take _her_ seriously.

"You are Shimofuri's ally," Sesshomaru told her, "I see no reason why I should worry about what happens here in the Middle Lands any longer."

Tsukiyume's face fell; her ears fell flat, looking more like two blobs of snow on her head then. "You don't trust me."

"I must leave," Sesshomaru said, stepping forward. He moved his hand behind him, reaching for Saya to make sure that she was moving with him. "Come, Saya."

They walked past Tsukiyume. Sesshomaru didn't look back; his face was grimly set, contemplating Tsukiyume's words. Saya, however, did twist and peer back at the strange woman with her black hair and her white ears and the sad eyes. She fascinated Saya for many reasons and made her entire trip to the wedding with her father worthwhile.

She had a scent that Saya recognized as being close to her own. They were not sisters, not true blood family, but they had the _species_ similarity. Among all of the inuyoukai and all of the humans at the wedding, Saya had at last found another being with a scent that was _both_ species.

Saya was not alone in the world after all. She thought of the white stone tucked in her robes and wondered if the fox's magic inside it could give her white dog ears too. What would having them be like…?

* * *

A/N: This story is about to take off like a cheetah after a Thompson's gazelle. There, I've warned you. As Scar says from _The Lion King, _Be Prepared.

On April 12, 2008, I rammed my parents' 2004 red vibe into a telephone pole. I'm okay, shaken but generally uninjured. I went through quite a bit of shock though. I have to warn readers that I might not be up to par as a result, and if the accident screws around with my psyche I might not write much for a while, I could get a nasty writer's block. I'll be praying that I don't but I have no guarantees. I can give you a preview of what's written already though so here it is:

"_Yes," Sasugainu nodded, brightening. "To control my nephew I must sacrifice a daughter and to have a son I will have a new wife…"_

"_And you will rule over all of the Middle Lands and the Western Lands." The source of the voice shifted, rising to her feet and stepping forward until the dim light from the moon outside had illuminated her. She was a tiny woman, a mature voice in a child's body. Her hair was long and flowing, a bright unnatural pink. Her eyes were dark, deep and black, like the bottom of an inkwell. "We are very close now, you cannot falter."_

_Sasugainu's jaw squared, "I won't."_


	7. Crouching Wolf Hidden Kitsune

A/N: This story is about to take off like a cheetah after a Thompson's gazelle. There, I've warned you. As Scar says from _The Lion King, _Be Prepared. In this chapter I have an italics fetish too I think. Just bear with me. I've had a fairly large number of people ask me if IY and family will be in this one. I hadn't planned on it, but I did leave the possibility open. Circumstances might arise that would allow for the different generations to meet…

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or Sesshomaru.

Last Chapter: Saya came with Sess to the wedding. Sess was very protective of her. Shimofuri and Amagumori were reluctantly married. Shimofuri saw some unusual guests at his wedding and a clumsy servant bumped into Sess while he was there. Sasugainu threatened Saya in a roundabout way and Tsukiyume approached Sess trying to ask for his help against her uncle. Sess didn't pay her much mind. Saya realized that she and Tsukiyume are "the same species." She has heard the word hanyou but doesn't know what it means.

* * *

**Crouching Wolf Hidden Kitsune**

"_You got it?" Sasugainu demanded when he'd slid the door shut behind him. His room was dark, the braziers unlit. Darkness had fallen, the nighttime chill of spring remained in the air, lingering though Sasugainu was too excited to feel it. "The servant came to you with it?"_

_A voice rose out of the dark near his futon, a deep woman's voice. "Yes, I have it. She did a fine job. He suspected nothing. He brought his child, we were lucky—she distracted him."_

_Sasugainu sneered and stepped further into the darkness. "She looks exactly like him. Will you kill her? We don't need her. Hanyou sully the bloodlines." He paused, burping and making a gagging sound. _

"_The sake bothers you?" the woman asked, her voice conveyed the smile that must've curved over her lips with amusement. _

"_Yes," he replied, snarling, "How much longer must I—"_

"_Until I have ensured our success," She snapped, irritably. "You must deal with a few things. Your niece may become a problem. Kanseninu told me that she was snooping around him during the ceremony. He also saw her speaking to Sesshomaru…"_

"_She was probably trying to talk to his brat." Sasugainu waved a hand dismissively at the shadows and sat heavily on the floor, slouching there tiredly. _

"_You should get rid of her."_

"_It's already been taken care of. She always stays with Shimofuri. They're going to the Nanka tomorrow." Sasugainu stretched and stifled a yawn, actually considering sleep. It was the best way to rid his body of the alcohol he'd been forced to ingest, to keep up "appearances."_

"_That isn't good enough," the woman's voice snapped, "I want her dead. Send an assassin on the road to make it look like an accident. We'll quash Shimofuri for good with that…"_

_Sasugainu shook his head and the movement silenced the woman that spoke from the shadows, "I don't see why that's necessary Jishin…"_

"_Because that ungrateful whelp turned me away! He could've had everything with my help—you both could have! If you both had worked with me there would be no need for this deception. I know you would share the Middle Lands with him and my people as well easily. Your nephew is impractical, wrapped in honor…" she spat, disgusted. _

_Sighing, Sasugainu nodded, giving in. "I will send an assassin." He looked up, searching the darkness, "Are you absolutely sure that we can't ask Shimofuri for his help again? He and Tsukiyume are all that's left of my sister's family…"_

"_You said it yourself—hanyou sully your bloodlines. Losing her means nothing. We do not truly need to kill Shimofuri if that is your wish." She paused, as if thinking, then asked, "What is your wish? Has it changed since we made our pact?"_

_Sasugainu shook his head. "No, I still believe we must kill Sesshomaru to restore the balance of power. We must end Sesshomaru's tyranny."_

"_And an heir. You wished for a new wife and a son…"_

_Sasugainu closed his eyes, "Yes."_

"_Then that is what I will give you, as soon as Sesshomaru is taken care of."_

"_And what of Amagumori?" Sasugainu asked. _

"_You know we agreed on her sacrifice already, Sasugainu," the deep voice said, somberly, "But I can assure you that her soul will be reborn quickly. Her life will begin anew."_

"_Yes," Sasugainu nodded, brightening. "To control my nephew I must sacrifice a daughter and to have a son I will have a new wife…"_

"_And you will rule over all of the Middle Lands and the Western Lands." The source of the voice shifted, rising to her feet and stepping forward until the dim light from the moon outside had illuminated her. She was a tiny woman, a mature voice in a child's body. Her hair was long and flowing, a bright unnatural pink. Her eyes were dark, deep and black, like the bottom of an inkwell. "We are very close now, you cannot falter."_

_Sasugainu's jaw squared, "I won't."_

_The pink-haired woman smiled slyly. "If you did I would know and I would not be pleased with you, Sasugainu. I have gone to great lengths to ensure Sesshomaru's destruction for you…"_

"_I will not falter." Sasugainu assured her, his eyes narrowing with determination. "I would do anything to get the son that Hokinsha denied me."_

"_And you will." Jishin moved toward the window and, as the moonlight hit her body, she became transparent, fading like a ghost. "It's only a little longer now and I will deliver your new wife and daughter to you…"_

_She vanished, dispersing into the darkness, leaving Sasugainu alone to contemplate his upcoming future, the prospect of ruling with a vast land and limitless armies at his disposal…_

* * *

Only two days after Sesshomaru and Saya had returned from the wedding together, Sesshomaru was already planning to leave again. Ginrei's scent had not yet changed and, with each passing hour at Jouka being exposed to the cocktail of sexually stimulating pheromones, Sesshomaru was pushed closer and closer to losing control.

Disturbing him even further was the niggling thought that Rin was pregnant. Her scent had changed slightly, adding an extra, fuller layer to it. Long before Rin ever knew that she was pregnant herself, Sesshomaru's nose could tell him the truth. He didn't share this suspicion with Rin because the scent was vague still, more an illusion or a hope inside Sesshomaru's mind. The suspicion, however, made his life all that much more difficult. In the past Rin had suffered uncountable traumatizing miscarriages. Saya had almost not survived to term on multiple occasions.

Since Saya's birth and since her weaning, Rin had become fertile again but, if she had been pregnant, the pregnancies hadn't lasted more than a few days before her body expelled them. These losses weren't painful for Rin really because she didn't perceive them as what they were: miscarriages. To Sesshomaru, with his keen sense of smell, the miscarriages were real enough and they troubled him. When he suspected that she was pregnant, Sesshomaru would avoid intimacy with her at all costs for fear of jolting the new child right out of her.

That meant that he had nowhere to relieve himself, no way to escape the lust that powered him when he was trying to be with his family inside Jouka's confining walls. He decided to leave for the Middle Lands to investigate Tsukiyume's words of warning at the wedding. He planned to be absent for upwards of a week, skulking about the land, listening to any rumor of trouble there. Perhaps, if he felt bold enough, Sesshomaru would visit Shimofuri or Sasugainu directly to question them. If he wished he might demonstrate his power by capturing Tsukiyume to listen to more of what she had to say.

In spite of the fact that he didn't trust her—she was Shimofuri's sister after all—Sesshomaru was never one to ignore or dismiss strategic information.

To help with his information gathering, Sesshomaru invited Jaken to join him on his excursion. This overwhelmed the toad with joy while it saddened many of the palace workers as well as Rin and probably Ginrei as well. Without Jaken to help babysit Jouka would become a lot more hectic for the women caretakers and mothers there.

Later the toad would prove indispensible—though Sesshomaru never could've dreamed, even in his wildest fantasies (which he never wasted time with anyway) that he would find himself truly relying on the little frog.

Sesshomaru set off with the loyal toad at his side, oblivious to the fact that he was about to taste mortality more intimately than he ever had before…

* * *

_A wolf leapt at her, snarling. Saliva dripped from its slobbering jaws. Its teeth flashed white in the dappled light under the forest's canopy. _

_Rin screamed but her throat was thick, no sound emerged. She scrabbled on the ground, digging her nails into the earth. Brush, grass, and rocks scratched her palms. Rin ran, her chest heaving, her heart drumming on the inside of her chest. _

_The sound of the wolf's paws was always close behind her, closing in. _

_She knew that she could never outrun him, but Rin's will to live was strong. He was chasing her for a meal; she was running for her life. _

_The wolf leapt and landed on her back. Rin fell, her body scuffing the ground, scraping her skin, making it raw before she came to a stop. The wolf snarled and bit into her shoulder, ripping the flesh away. The blood was rich and warm, spurting out of her wound, splattering on her cheeks. _

_But her attention to her own pain and terror disappeared when she saw Saya staring at her a few feet away, crouched in tattered, ragged robes. Saya was crying without a sound, her gaze locked onto Rin as she was eaten alive by the wolf on her back. The little girl's lips moved though no sound came out, but Rin knew what her child was saying anyway: "Mama…"_

_She tried to cry out, to tell Saya to run away, to leap into a tree, anything to save the girl. She was hanyou; surely she was fast enough to escape the wolves. Rin was dead, but Saya—she had to save Saya…_

_The wolf on her back changed suddenly, vanishing. Saya too changed, becoming Rin herself as a child. _

_The blood from her shoulder hadn't gone away. The smell and feel of it was realistic, gritty as it tried to clot, warm and thick as it spurted and flowed. Rin gritted her teeth together, trying to sit up even as dizziness from her loss of blood rose up to overwhelm her. _

_The child—Rin herself—sat squatted in the same tattered rags, staring at the adult Rin with grief. The silent tears that the child had cried when she was Saya hadn't stopped but continued to course down her cheeks unstoppably. _

_Without warning the child squeezed her eyes shut and let out a scream, "She killed you, Rin. You let her kill you!"_

Rin opened her eyes and found herself lying flat in her bed, covered by thick furs. Saya was at her side, sitting up and stretching each of her limbs like a cat, preparing for the day. When she sensed that Rin had woken she turned and looked back at her mother and cocked her head to one side. "Mama, are you hot?"

"What?" Rin asked, confused.

Saya reached out and gently brushed her fingers over Rin's forehead. "You're all wet."

Rin sat up and felt her face, grimacing with disgust as she realized that Saya was right. She had sweat uncontrollably as she slept. The "blood" in her dream could've easily been her sweat—though it felt too real, too horrific. Rin's memories of being killed by the wolves as a child were faint, half-lost when Sesshomaru had used his Tenseiga to restore her to life. She had lived two lives, one with Sesshomaru and one without.

It had been three days since Sesshomaru had left Jouka behind. In that time Rin had begun dreaming vividly. The dreams weren't always the same about her death as a child at the jaws of the wolves. The night before she'd dreamed that giving birth to Saya had killed her. And before that she'd seen an inuyoukai attack her, stabbing her through with his sword.

She slid her legs over the futon and off to the side. "I guess I need a bath."

"Can I take one with you, Mama?" Saya asked, beaming.

"Of course you can."

Mother and daughter bathed together, staying in the tub for a long time, until the bathwater chilled, losing its heat. They dressed in loose, light-weight robes to welcome the approaching summer heat. It was already midmorning when Saya and Rin sat in the tearoom, eating rice cakes and pickled plums with green tea.

The usual routine of lessons came and went. With Sesshomaru gone, Ginrei joined in. In some ways Rin was actually very grateful for Ginrei's help. Ginrei had had the benefit of many more years of education. Although Rin was highly educated as a human woman, she couldn't compare to what Ginrei ultimately could offer Hanone and Saya. Even Rin sometimes joined the girls, learning from Ginrei.

The relationship between Rin and Ginrei had always been uncertain, even stilted or dangerous. There had only been one time when they had been genuinely close. After Hanone had been born and Sesshomaru had left them both for an extended period of time, Rin and Ginrei bonded together. In those days they shared more in common than they likely ever would again. Both had a young daughter, both had lost their parents and, in some fashion or another, were saved by Sesshomaru. Ginrei had grown up as an inuyoukai, the way Rin longed to have done herself. With crying babies the two women, though different species, were more united than separate.

Currently they were both strained by Sesshomaru. Ginrei was aware of her effect on him, and of his on her. She wouldn't want to create a rift between herself and Rin, but the chemical attraction as it were was undeniable and irresistible. The two women continued their strange truce, their strange camaraderie. They were a little like two countries after a war. They maintained peace, even tried to harmonize with one another, but the underlying aggression could never be pushed entirely aside. Only time could do that and the rift in their relationship—Sesshomaru basically—was still fresh and tender.

Ginrei had orchestrated a dance demonstration. Outside, in the sunlight, she performed the moves for her small audience: Rin, Saya, and Hanone. As soon as Ginrei had finished she and Rin let Hanone and Saya run out into the open field before the little river nearby Jouka palace. Rin and Ginrei stayed on the grass, watching their daughters run around. Now the games were imitations of Ginrei's dance. Ginrei smiled proudly whenever she caught one of the girls aping her dance.

"You should teach them to dance," Rin suggested.

Ginrei shook her head, squinting her eyes in the bright sunlight. "They're too young. Hanone hasn't even mastered running anywhere yet. She doesn't have the balance."

"What about Saya?"

Ginrei took her gaze away from the girls and focused on Rin, cautiously. There was pain in her expression. Sesshomaru judged Hanone unfairly because of Saya. Saya excelled and advanced because she grew faster. Hanone lagged behind not only because she was younger, but because she was slower growing as a pureblooded inuyoukai. At last Ginrei relented. "I could teach Saya."

"Could you teach me, Ginrei?" Rin asked, speaking bluntly but in a friendly, open tone. She gave Ginrei a little bow of respect. "You dance beautifully. Lord Sesshomaru never taught me how to dance. Just how to fight."

"I was never taught to fight. Just to dance." Ginrei parried, laughing once. She nodded, "I could teach you too, but you might have to promise not to become jealous of your own child. Everything that Saya touches turns into gold."

Rin bit her lip and watched beyond Ginrei's shoulder as Saya leaped up on one leg and flailed her arms around. One hand was closed in a fist, probably around the white stone that Saya refused to be parted with. "If it were any other way I'm afraid that Lord Sesshomaru would turn her away because she is hanyou."

Ginrei laughed hard then, lifting her hands to cover her lips. "Do you really believe that?"

"Of course I do!" Rin snapped, frowning. "Lord Sesshomaru despises hanyou because of his younger brother. You've never met him but…"

Ginrei interrupted her, "Lord Sesshomaru could never feel that way about Saya. He looks at her and sees himself and _you._ He doesn't see _hanyou."_

Startled, Rin blinked and then focused her attention on the girls again, thinking hard. "I hadn't really thought of it that way."

"What other way is there to think about it?" Ginrei asked, cocking her head to one side. She watched Rin's face as the human woman thought and, slowly, her face wrinkled with consternation. "Lady Rin—your scent has changed."

This news snapped Rin's gaze back onto Ginrei immediately. "What do you mean?"

"It's nothing," Ginrei shook her head, burying the topic. "When do you suppose Lord Sesshomaru will be returning?"

"I don't know," Rin replied, sighing. She fidgeted with her hands in her lap as the breeze picked up, rustling the line of trees in the distance, beyond the little babbling brook. "He took Jaken with him; it probably won't be for a long time."

"Hmn." Ginrei nodded, remaining silent.

The days were growing longer, warmer, and more humid. Rin ran her hand over her neck, feeling the slow collection of moisture. She felt a pang of jealousy when she saw the way that Ginrei wasn't sweating. Ginrei's skin was as smooth and pale as porcelain or freshly fallen snow. She was about to open her mouth to ask Ginrei if she was hot too but at that moment Hanone tripped and began to cry. Both mothers rose without question to her aid, destroying any further chance they had for conversation.

* * *

Although they were married, Amagumori and Shimofuri stayed in separate rooms in opposite ends of the castle in the Nanka. Their marriage was unconsummated and for the most part Shimofuri's routine hadn't changed at all since his uncle had forced him to take his cousin as a wife. He ate meals with Amagumori, but most of the time he foisted her off onto his half-sister, Tsukiyume. His hanyou sister entertained Amagumori to the best of her ability and, as an added bonus, Tsukiyume was able to offer up information about Sasugainu that came freshly reported to Amagumori in the letters she received from her younger sister Soeki.

Since before Tsukiyume had been born the castle in the Nanka had housed a Buddhist temple. It had been built to welcome Kokoro, the human man that had been Tsukiyume's father. Taikokajin, the leader of the Middle Lands at the time, had begun her affair with the monk and after she had conceived their child she ordered that the shrine be set up within the wall-protected castle grounds so that her lover would not have to leave to worship daily. The spiritual man had been faced with prejudice—from both sides—for his bizarre position with the ruling lady. Humans were disturbed with his power, his betrayal seemingly of his religion, and with the fact that he was involved with a non-human. Inuyoukai resented him for similar reasons, but mostly because of his weakness as a human. How could a mere human find so much power with an inuyoukai woman?

In the end it had not been an outside source that killed Kokoro—but that was another story entirely, one that had come to rest with the recent death of Lady Taikokajin.

Now the temple was a place for the human servants to worship, and for Tsukiyume. The passage of time had allowed for the spiritual energy left by monks in the past to wear away. No priests were added after Kokoro's death and so, over time the temple became safe for inuyoukai to enter without suffering pain by walking over the sacred ground.

On a certain day Tsukiyume left the women's quarters and went to worship. Tsukiyume had no formal training, but she had always been drawn to the rituals and peace of the temple, a trait that she probably shared with her human father. In the past Shimofuri might've accompanied her as a protective, loving shadow. The siblings were close and affectionate, despite their different fathers. But the days when Shimofuri had been free to join her at the temple were long gone. Aside from being busy, Shimofuri was also trying to avoid his wife who now accompanied Tsukiyume nearly everywhere.

On her first visit to the temple after arriving home from the Itou, Tsukiyume and Amagumori went together. Amagumori was timid as she gazed at the tapered roof of the temple. Tsukiyume coaxed her sister-in-law up the stairs and then had to instruct her to remove her shoes outside.

"Father warned us about spiritual powers," Amagumori wrapped her arms around herself, trying not to come into contact with any of the wooden walls or the tapestries, the painted scrolls on the walls.

Tsukiyume's white dog ears twittered and fell flat on her head. To keep from frowning at her sister-in-law she pointed her gaze straight ahead on the reflecting gold of the inside of the temple. "There isn't any of it here. You're safe." She reached out and snatched Amagumori's hand in her own. "Come on then."

The two young women passed into the open hall of the temple. Writings were pinned to the walls, scrolls and texts. Statues of the Buddha and several different Kannons of him were arranged about the temple interior. Braziers flickered dimly in the corners and at one spot in the center. They threw little light. The temple was dark, almost gloomy. Stepping inside the temple was to leave everything else outside. It was easy to forget that the sun was shining outside, warming the world up to a hot, prosperous summer. Amagumori and Tsukiyume could have lied out on the grass, soaking it up like sponges, instead of migrating around the inside of a dark, tomb-like temple. But although that was probably what Amagumori wanted to do with her time, Tsukiyume wasn't about to be persuaded to leave without paying the proper respects.

They paused before one of the statues, made of wood inside, but coated outwardly in a fine layer of gold paint. Amagumori stared at the statue, blankly. Tsukiyume did the same for a time and then dropped down to her knees and ducked her head, closing her eyes.

Confused, even flustered, Amagumori knelt as well, imitating her companion. "What does all this mean? Why do humans come here to stare at these figures?"

Tsukiyume shook her head without opening her eyes. "I don't know."

"But you do! You're part human aren't you? And you know what you're doing now. Why kneel here? Why can't we go outside and think about—"

"I don't know what humans do in the temple," Tsukiyume interrupted, impatience beginning to show through her small voice, "I just do what feels right. I pray to my father."

"Your human father?" Amagumori whispered, as if showing interest in the topic were taboo or improper somehow. She even covered her lips with one hand while she stared at Tsukiyume's bowed head and closed eyes.

"Yes."

A sound came at the door, the sound of grit grinding on the floorboards, as if someone had entered the temple with dirt on their shoes. Amagumori turned to stare at the entryway, the distant bright, white light of the sun outside in the castle courtyard. She recalled Tsukiyume telling her that Shimofuri had sometimes accompanied her to the temple, out of respect for the hanyou girl's monk father as well as a guardian though that hardly seemed necessary.

The thought of Shimofuri stepped out of the entryway in his boots made Amagumori slightly nauseous. Her husband-cousin was handsome and perfectly kind to her, and Amagumori could imagine lying beneath him and perhaps even enjoying the experience—but his obvious disinterest in her cut into Amagumori's pride.

And then the faintest breath of air brought the scent of the noisemaker into Amagumori's nostrils and her spine steeled with fear. "A wolf!"

Tsukiyume glanced up, baffled. "What are you…" but already her nose was working the air too and discovering the same fact. Her eyes, an off-color brown that was closer to orange, widened. "Amagumori…"

A black shape vaulted from the entrance to the temple. His shadow obscured the gold of the Buddha Kannon and his speed, the air disrupted by his rapid passage, whipped the scrolls that hung on the walls as if they were flags waving from the top of a pole. He landed between the two young women before they could react with anything more than screams of surprise.

The wolf kicked at Amagumori, sending Shimofuri's young wife skittering away into the wall between the Kannon statues. She cried out with the impact but scrambled to get to her feet and run. The wolf had surely come for her. She'd been anticipating some sort of attempt on her life that was probably made by her own father.

But as Amagumori got to her feet and leapt into the air, straight over one of the Kannon statues, she realized that the wolf had not pursued her.

From on the floor Tsukiyume screamed, her voice warbled in it, weakening.

"Tsukiyume!" Amagumori stumbled and landed atop the Kannon before she slid off, landing clumsily on the floor. Through the white veil of her long, flowing hair, Amagumori saw the black shape of the wolf dash away, back toward the light of the door. On the floor, crumpled where she'd been knelt originally before the Kannon statue, Tsukiyume's body was glowing a dark blue.

Amagumori stumbled forward, looking both ways for the wolf as she went. There was no sign of him. Amagumori fell onto her knees in front of Tsukiyume and reached out to touch her, but the hanyou girl cringed and pulled away.

"Tsukiyume?"

The hanyou girl whimpered in reply and slowly lifted her head. Her black hair fell away from her pale face and Amagumori smelled blood though on Tsukiyume's dark purple robes and with the low light it was impossible to see. The blue light that had mysteriously encircled her body had dissipated, fading into one spot: a place on her side that jutted out and glowed iridescently.

"What is—" as she spoke, Amagumori reached out for the thing but Tsukiyume slapped her hand away. Startled, Amagumori pulled her hand back and stared at her sister-in-law, uncomprehendingly. "That's a dagger! Why won't you let me pull it out of you?"

Tsukiyume gritted her teeth in a vicious maw of pain. Her hands moved shakingly toward the glowing shape imbedded in her side. "It's purifying magic," she ground out between her grinding jaws. "If you touch it you'll die."

Amagumori squeaked pathetically, "Are you going to die?"

"No," Tsukiyume frowned and, trembling, her hand closed over the glowing dagger's hilt and she pulled on it once, fiercely. The dagger skidded away, clattering on the floor and instantly losing its crackling blue glow the moment it left Tsukiyume's body. The hanyou girl gripped her side with one hand and fought to keep herself sitting upright with the other. In the dim light her blood was visible in the streaks of black on the wooden floor and in the glistening moisture on Tsukiyume's side and her thigh. "Can you take me…" Tsukiyume struggled to breathe and speak clearly, "…to shishi-sama?"

Amagumori nodded dimly. "Of course." She reached out tentatively to help Tsukiyume and then, for the first time, gasped as she realized what the dagger had done to the hanyou girl. Tsukiyume's blood and her body were _human._ The hand on the floor, smearing her blackish blood around had no claws. The teeth that she gritted in her fierce snarl-smile of pain, had no fangs. And atop her head of full black hair there were not white dog ears. "You're human now?" she gawked.

Tsukiyume's eyes rolled around for a moment, her breathing hitched. "Shishi-sama…" she gasped, "Take me…"

Amagumori knelt and scooped Tsukiyume up into her arms more confidently now, as if she were handling a child. "I'll get you there, Sister. You'll be all right."

* * *

On a bright, warm early summer day, at about the same time that Rin and Ginrei had sat on the grass outside Jouka palace to talk after a day of lessons, Sesshomaru found himself standing outside a small mountain Shinto shrine. The shrine was intact, but nothing else was. The archway overhead with its ceremonial rope ties, was worn from the passage of time, the wind and the rain. The ceremonial, symbolical ropes tied on the archway fluttered in the hot wind.

That hot wind was not natural. It rose and spread over the area from the remains of the burning houses around the shrine. The shrine was the only part of a small mountain village at the edge of the Western Lands, on its most mountainous southern tip that was not burning. Huts were tipped over and demolished, smoldering. Others, closer to the shrine, were still rapidly burning. Blackened beams and human possessions littered the ruins of once-happy homes.

The cause of the fire was not manmade or even brought on by an attack of some kind of bloodthirsty, destructive demon. Instead the earth itself had caused the fire, the earth combined with human foolishness. After a harsh earthquake, the huts and the families they sheltered had caught on fire. The huts were close enough to one another, huddled for warmth in the winter, that when a few hearths had climbed out of control and licked hungrily at wood and thatch walls, all of the huts had gone up in flames. Unable to control the fire, the human habitants had fled.

Yet, oddly enough, the fire had left the Shinto shrine untouched so far. And, with his acute ears and nose, Sesshomaru had picked out a scent and a sound among the ashes, flames, and smoke of the rest of the village. It was a child, a girl, scared and crying inside the shrine.

Jaken was at his side, mumbling and whimpering nervously. The toad scuffed his feet in the dirt and suggested, in a pleading voice, that Sesshomaru might want to leave the place. "Lord Sesshomaru, I can still feel the ground shuddering here! This place is not safe!"

It was true, deep under the ground the earth was shifting as the plates resettled after this latest burst of movement. Unlike Jaken, who was a coward and would run at the first hint of an earthquake, Sesshomaru was a creature driven by a quest for power and sometimes curiosity brought power through knowledge. Sesshomaru knew from listening to the earth in past quakes that the tiny shudders under his feet were probably normal, tiny aftershocks. It was as if the earth had sustained a cut and the initial quake had been a convulsion of pain. The aftershocks were like the tiny trembling in the skin after it has adjusted to the pain.

"You need not follow me," he told the toad, knowing it would drive Jaken insane to choose between the inherent danger of a shrine—and presumably the spiritual power within it—and his unending loyalty.

"Lord Sesshomaru! Please! Don't leave me!"

Sesshomaru ignored Jaken's cries and crossed the threshold, stepping onto the sacred shrine ground, passing directly beneath and under the gates. (A/N: Torii?) Jaken screeched behind him and lurched forward, following him in a cringing, whimpering mess. Sesshomaru paused after taking three steps, abruptly growing cautious. The ground of the shrine was meant to be sacred, charged with the energy of the human priests and priestesses that tended it. That meant that Sesshomaru's demonic energy should've reacted negatively with it, causing him pain.

There was no sensation of tingling, no burning in his feet, in his hands, or on his face.

From inside the shrine, the child's cries continued, high and growing hysterical. A few trees to the left of the shrine had caught fire. The branches were dry. New leaves had spread out and, even though they were healthy and green, the fire readily consumed them. The hot, burning wind rose up, closer to Sesshomaru, Jaken, and to the shrine, licking hungrily at the tapered eaves.

Jaken was mumbling to himself in surprise, "There's no pain! The priests and miko here must've had no power!"

Sesshomaru ignored the toad's conjecture and slowly lifted his hand to draw his sword. In one short and quick slash Sesshomaru sent a burst of energy at the burning trees and the nearest blackened and smoldering hut. The force of the blow scattered the cinders and blew the fire away backward. The tree branches fell to the ground and disintegrated. The crackling tongues of the fire disappeared, leaving only clouds of hazy, thick smoke. That blow would buy Sesshomaru more time, but it hadn't stopped the fire completely.

Without taking his shoes off outside as any human would to honor ritual and respect, Sesshomaru entered the shrine. Jaken toddled after him making small noises of nervousness, expecting at any moment that the spiritual power he expected in such a place would arise from the floorboards and cut him in two.

The child was in the very back, where the shrine keepers lived. Sesshomaru navigated by scent, but to an unknowledgeable pair of eyes it would appear that the inuyoukai lord was acquainted with the layout of the shrine. Once inside he moved immediately to the far left toward a discreet door behind a decorative screen. Beyond it was the shrine keeper's quarters, and the child.

"I don't smell any incense!" Jaken exclaimed. "That's strange…I guess the fire smoke…" he paused, seeing that Sesshomaru was opening another door and walking deeper into the shrine. He squeaked and rushed after his lord, forgetting his observations.

Even as he left the toad behind, Sesshomaru considered his words. The lack of spiritual energy, the lack of incense scents lingering in the floorboards and the walls. It was odd—but the fire outside was an overpowering stink. The smell of the ash from the outside could've overwhelmed his nose too, just as it might've muted Jaken's. But that thought was disagreeable to him. He slowed his pace and narrowed his eyes in the dark, suspicious of the situation.

The child was buried underneath some thin, tattered blankets. Sesshomaru halted just inside the doorway, watching the bundle move. It seemed to shiver, shaking with sobs. Sesshomaru could smell the salt of her tears.

His expression softened as he remembered Saya's tears, how his daughter had worked to hide them from him during their journey to the Middle Lands to see Shimofuri's wedding. The traveling had been so difficult for Saya because she was so young, younger than she seemed really, but her bravery surprised and pleased him.

This child was not brave that he could tell, but since taking Rin in as a child, Sesshomaru had been left with a soft spot, even a weakness for innocent human children who underwent trauma or disaster. If he ran across a child in distress he frequently made an effort to save the child, male or female. He had even taken in other children before. Years ago he'd rescued a boy named Shero after the boy's family was killed and his entire village destroyed by demons. Shero had grown up in his castle, serving the lord that had saved his life.

Jaken crowded Sesshomaru's ankles, peeking into the room with his wide, yellow eyes. "Foolish child! Crying while the place burns down around her!"

Sesshomaru stepped forward and, gently, leaned forward just enough to lift the blanket up from over the child's head. The little girl stared up at him, wide-eyed and stunned. Wet streaks of tears had left tracks down her face. Her body was covered in ash, her clothes were sooty. Her face was black-streaked, though the ash was partially washed away by her crying. Underneath the tears and the ash the girl's face was red, as if from blushing. In reality it was probably the heat of a fire that had brought out the color in her cheeks.

"I will not harm you," Sesshomaru assured her. "You must leave this place, it's not safe."

The child wrapped her tiny arms around herself and scooted away from him over the empty bed, which was little more than a wood pallet covered in sheets and a few furs. Sesshomaru knelt to be on her level and slowly extended his hand toward her. "Come with me."

The child sent one shaking hand out toward him. Everything appeared to be normal. Sesshomaru would scoop the girl up and take her outside and to safety. He would track the missing villagers and tell the little girl where to go to find them. He would make every effort not to reveal himself to the humans; it would only alarm them and possibly estrange the girl from her own family. The girl could rejoin them without repaying him or even thanking him…

The child's hand closed over a few of his fingers tightly and then she moved, twisting faster than was humanly possible—Sesshomaru felt a small, sharp pain in his forearm. In less than a second the child had vanished, leaping backwards from him and the bed. Her body burst through the wall of the shrine. The wood splintered, shattering and splintering.

Jaken cried out, startled, and dove behind Sesshomaru for cover, half-tripping over his feet as he went.

Sesshomaru rose to his feet, staring benignly at his arm. The thing—not a child—had stabbed him with a small gray weapon, curved like a claw. It wasn't made of metal or bone, but rather it was fibrous, like a thorn from a plant. The wound it would leave was insubstantial. Sesshomaru would heal completely from it in less than a day. Sesshomaru flicked the thorn away.

"What was that thing?" Jaken shrieked.

Sesshomaru leapt forward, vanishing out of the hole that the creature had made when it jumped outside. The forest behind the shrine was also on fire. The wind blowing over the mountains was spreading it rapidly. Fresh spring leaves dwindled and curled in their silent agony and death as the fire consumed them. The trees gave up their vitality, letting the fire eat them alive. After it left them the blackened skeletons remained, forlorn and depressing.

A shape waited in the forest, between the walls of burning trees. It was small, like the child had been, but now Sesshomaru recognized that it wasn't human. It was a kitsune, one of the most powerful of the spell-casting youkai.

Sesshomaru drew his sword, ready to wipe out the prankster without any questions or anger.

"The great Sesshomaru has a weakness for human girls!" The kitsune had a feminine voice, high and whiny. "I didn't believe that he would fall so easily into my trap!"

Sesshomaru made a quick, wide swipe through the air midlevel, hoping to catch the fox as it leapt away with a broad sweep of his power. White-hot energy swept outward, expanding. It cut through the burning trees, stripping the unburned leaves and blowing them to bits. When it smashed into the tree trunks there was a faint pause before they exploded into wooden, smoldering shrapnel. Gray smoke from the fire of before, and white smoke-steam rose from the ground and from the shattered trees after the brightness of the energy had passed.

Narrowing his golden eyes, Sesshomaru scanned the trees that hadn't been struck down by his blow. The fire continued to rage behind him on both sides, but in front of him it had been blown away. Somewhere, distantly, beyond the crackling of the fire and the collapsing ruins, Sesshomaru could hear Jaken whimpering. The smoke-smell was too powerful and cloying, ruining any chance that Sesshomaru had to pick out the kitsune's scent.

A shape flitted through the trees a hundred feet away, blurred even to Sesshomaru's eyes. It was the kitsune, streaking through the wreckage and smoldering remnants of bark, tree trunks, and fallen branches. It was teleporting, a common kitsune trick. As it drew nearer, jumping in a zigzag, Sesshomaru raised his arm and predicted its path. Pursing his lips, the only sign of any effort, he slashed with his blade, sending out another burst of destructive power.

The kitsune anticipated his blow and fell flat. Sesshomaru caught the motion and launched himself forward, slashing low with the sword now. The kitsune was unable to avoid both blows. She leapt up too soon and found her body immersed in the energy of the first midlevel blow that Sesshomaru had made. She cried out and even from more than fifty feet away, Sesshomaru could smell the spurt of blood that issued out of her body as her body was cut apart and shredded.

He was standing over the kitsune even before she had hit the ground and stopped rolling on the slight hill. Leaves and dirt clung to her body, which had been reduced into a mostly bloody pulp. One arm had been completely severed at the shoulder. She was clutching it, her eyes wide with shock, her mouth gasping in silent agony.

Sesshomaru touched her neck with the tip of his sword, and though it failed to draw her attention to him, Sesshomaru tried to interrogate her nevertheless. "Fox, who do you serve?"

The blood continued to pump from her severed arm. There was no sight of the lost limb itself, it had probably vaporized. The fox was trying to clasp the bleeding stump, trying to slow the blood loss. There were many other cuts on her body, deep slashes that were hemorrhaging just as much as her severed arm, but it was her arm that captivated her. She was lost in her own world of shock, she didn't feel Sesshomaru's throat against her neck and didn't notice his deep shadow over her dying body.

"Tell me who sent you here," Sesshomaru insisted. It was vital that he learn whether this kitsune was just taunting him or whether she had been sent to attempt an assassination. If it was the latter Sesshomaru would follow up with deadly force.

The kistune girl at last turned her gaze toward Sesshomaru, registering his presence. Her green eyes were wide; her pupils were constricted into tiny pinpricks. Her face quivered, as if she were about to convulse, but the uncoordinated shaking motions turned into a snarl of hatred. "You're dead," she spat.

"Unlikely," Sesshomaru answered, blandly. Her hatred didn't impress him, neither had her prank. It was only remarkable that she had managed to prick his skin with her strange thorn, managed to draw a few little drops of blood from him. Many of his foes never even did that before they died at his hands and powers. This kitsune girl, although she was weak and she'd underestimated him, she _had_ drawn his blood. For that cleverness he would kill her as a threat.

"The illness is already inside you," the kitsune girl grinned, exposing teeth that had blood between them, covering over her gums.

The realization of his blood, the tiny injury in his forearm where she had pricked him, no matter how miniscule, made Sesshomaru stiffen with alarm. Disease was often spread through close, physical combat and blood. Although Sesshomaru had no knowledge of viruses or bacteria, he understood _contagion._ Symptoms of disease were passed from creature to creature, like an evil spell, or like bad air—like the fire leaping from on hut to another, passed along by the wind.

"You're going to die," the kitsune taunted him even as her own body slumped and her face paled into a gray color with the closeness of her own mortality.

Sesshomaru thrust forward with his sword, ending her life in a fast, hot burst of energy. The ground where she had lain seconds before steamed in a white, misty exhaust. Sesshomaru sheathed his sword and turned his back on the bloodied, steaming spot, walking stiffly away. He clenched his first, tightening his forearm. The wound didn't even sting. It was as pathetic as an insect bite.

But even some tiny insect bites were deadly.

Jaken tumbled out of the shrine clumsily and padded to where Sesshomaru was, falling immediately into a bow. "My lord! Did you kill that beast?"

Sesshomaru walked past Jaken as if the toad weren't there. Uncertainly, Jaken got to his feet and hurried after Sesshomaru. "Where to now, my lord?"

"The Middle Lands," Sesshomaru answered without pausing.

He would confront Shimofuri if he began to feel ill. If there was a poison in his veins, Sesshomaru would not fade away quietly without facing the creature he felt certain was responsible for the attack…

And then he stopped, his golden eyes springing open wide for a second as a memory only a week old rushed through his mind in a young woman's voice: _"He knows he would be defeated if he tried to do that outright. It's something else—a poison or a spell…"_ It was Tsukiyume's voice, her warning concerning Sasugainu. Was she telling the truth, or had she been working for her brother to assure that Sesshomaru would not suspect Shimofuri?

"Lord Sesshomaru?" Jaken called, his voice quivering with nervousness.

Unfaltering, Sesshomaru started walking again. He would not change his course, but he would keep both lords of the Middle Lands under suspicion…

* * *

A/N what's going to happen to him eh? Don't worry it'll come out soon enough…

Next time:

As he swallowed the tea in a few thirsty gulps, aware in a distracted way that it was _**not like him to drink so hurriedly and with such need**_**, **he noted that his arms and his chest—his ribs—were beginning to ache. It was a deep sensation, less of an ache actually and more of a _**burning**__…_

On his forearm, beneath his long, silken white haori sleeves, the tiny red dot where the thorn had pierced his skin was already scabbed over and gone. It would leave no trace in just a few hours.

_**The illness is already inside you**__;_ the kitsune girl's voice echoed inside his brain. _**You're going to die.**_


	8. Voices of the Dead

A/N: To an anonymous reviewer called **LastResort55** thank you so much for your encouragement! If I recall you reviewed several of my stories after I talked about my accident and encouraged me to keep writing and to go on thankful with just being alive. I just wanted to shout out to you in thanks. I write this stuff really for you guys, and the support you all offered me was amazing. Thank you everyone!!

When you read this I will be out of classes, but as I write this I am still in my final week of classes (also known as exams). Time travel!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything basically. I barely own my own body.

Last Chapter: The Thompsons gazelle saw the cheetah (I'm being figurative. There wasn't really a gazelle last chapter, just think in plot terms). Sasugainu talked to "himself" in his room. Sesshomaru left to tour around his lands and eventually the Middle Lands. Rin, Saya, Hanone, and Ginrei sat around and chit chatted. Tsukiyume took Amagumori to a Buddhist temple to worship and a wolf youkai attacked them, stabbing Tsuki with a dagger that purified her. Sesshomaru fell into a trap that a kitsune laid for him. He killed the fox but not before she had pricked him in the forearm and told him that he was going to die. (I'm grinning sadistically right now.) And now…

* * *

**Voices of the Dead**

A maid arrived and knelt timidly at the entrance to Sasugainu's bedroom. "My lord."

The inuyoukai leader turned slightly to stare at her. She was a tiny woman, as petite as he recalled Rin being on the rare occasions he'd seen her, but perhaps she was smaller more so because she was a lowly maid, a creature of little or no value. Sasugainu grunted and waved one clawed hand, acknowledging her before he turned back to his writings.

"Someone has come to see you. He won't give me a name; he says only to tell you that the Wolf has come to see you."

Sasugainu's hand paused over his characters, the brush frozen in his hand. He swallowed thickly. "Escort me to him. Is he in the audience room?"

"Yes, my lord."

Sasugainu pulled free sheets of clean paper over the words he'd written to hide them if a maid stumbled into the room to clean in his absence. He got to his feet and followed the tiny human woman through the twisted halls of his palace in the Itou toward the audience room. He was supposed to have returned to his proper holdings in the Hokubo province after Shimofuri had married Amagumori, but instead of doing that Sasugainu had sent Soeki there to stand in his place. His troublesome, spirited daughter would fume there, cut off from his scheming. She would write to Amagumori incessantly and perhaps she would even flee to the Nanka to be with her sister. He hoped she didn't do that—without her presence in the Hokubo Sasugainu was somewhat exposed.

Pushing aside those thoughts, Sasugainu stepped into the audience room and immediately saw the black-clothed Wolf seated on the padded floor, watching him with stern green-brown eyes. "Wolf," Sasugainu addressed him stiffly as he sat down on his elevated platform. "Have you met with success?"

Wolf bowed and nodded. "I have done as I was ordered, my lord."

Sasugainu clapped his hands together, feigning satisfaction. "Good then. Bring me a scribe! We'll draw up the documents for you now."

For his part in a plot to kill Tsukiyume, Sasugainu had hired Wolf as an assassin. Wolf was a nameless member of the wolf demon clan. Unlike the foxes who always loaned themselves out for such mischievous, devilish tasks, wolves were more secretive. They preferred tasks that needed more than one agent to get them done because, at their ultimate core, they were always pack animals. Wolf was alone only because he had been banished by one of his littermates, a brother that disputed a title or a bitch or some strip of land with him. He had agreed to do Sasugainu's bidding because Sasugainu had promised to fund and transport Wolf to a different island in the far north that had a different wolf clan. Wolf would try to join them as a transient and make his place there.

A servant entered carrying a table for writing. The scribe followed him, holding an inkwell, some paper, and a brush. The table was set down to one side and positioned between Wolf and Sasugainu. The negotiations went quickly and easily. As Wolf got what he wanted and what he'd been promised, his shoulders sagged with relief. Sasugainu watched him carefully, trying to read the other creature's mind though such powers were fully beyond his abilities. At last curiosity got the better of him and he raised his voice, asking, "Tell me Wolf, how did the task go exactly? Did you kill the hanyou girl?"

Wolf's expression darkened, his green-brown eyes narrowed. "My lord, I did not."

"Did the dagger work as I warned you that it would?"

"Yes. I used it on her and the moment it touched her flesh it exploded with light. My hands were burned though I tried to let go of it as quickly as I could." True to his words, Sasugainu noted that Wolf's hands were bandaged in black cloth, wrapped tightly several times over the palms and the fingers up to the first knuckles. It was as Sasugainu had wanted.

"Good, perfect." He nodded and smiled with real feeling for the first time.

Wolf cocked his head, his gaze flicked between Sasugainu's happiness and the scribe that was still transcribing their deal onto official paper. "You did not wish her to be killed?"

"I wanted her to be indisposed. I do not wish to see her dead." Silently, Sasugainu thought of the one who did, the long pink hair on the short, childish body. She was as small as Rin, as small as the maid, but her size concealed immense, overwhelming power…

Sasugainu flicked his clawed fingers, taking a moment to glance down at them. How long would it be before Jishin stopped demanding that he sacrifice his family to get what he—what they wanted? His wife, Hokinsha, had been taken first, though that was more by Sasugainu's request than by Jishin's demand. Sasugainu wanted a new wife and fresh children, heirs for his hopefully expanding kingdom. Jishin's first real demand had been that he would need to sacrifice a daughter, which was a small price to pay considering that they were worthless to him as heirs in order to punish and steal power from his nephew, yet another family member. Now she wanted Tsukiyume dead.

To please her Sasugainu had hired Wolf, but he'd designed the attack to appear as if he'd bungled it. He'd sent Wolf to attack his niece but he'd ordered the wolf not to cut off her head or to stab her in any terribly vital place. He'd also made sure that he'd provided the weapon—a dagger infused with spiritual energy. Tsukiyume would be purified but not killed. Jishin, he hoped, would see the outcome and think he was a bumbling idiot that didn't understand hanyou. The purified dagger stabbed into a pure demon _would_ kill them, but it only succeeded in injuring a hanyou. Tsukiyume would be severely wounded until her demonic powers returned, but after that she would recover. Jishin would be irritated but she wouldn't suspect him of purposefully fumbling the kill and Sasugainu meanwhile wouldn't live with his niece's soul haunting his conscience.

He imagined Shimofuri crouched near his precious half-sister's bedside, waiting and watching over her. It was a sad thing, he mused, to miss one's sibling. His older sister, Taikokajin, had once been close to him, motherly and protective. But as he'd grown their reversed positions and the fact that their father had chosen his elder _daughter_ as his heir, rubbed Sasugainu the wrong way. He'd loved and adored Taikokajin nonetheless, even when she'd gone mad, and it pained him to see her children suffering. But Shimofuri was a danger to the Middle Lands; butting heads openly with Sesshomaru and the young inuyoukai hadn't been powerful enough to keep Nishiyori from rebelling.

Sasugainu saw that to keep the Middle Lands safe, powerful, and protected as they should be, he had to step up to the plate and do what Shimofuri had been unable to do before: fix the balance of power between the Middle and the Western Lands, the rogue inuyoukai and the clan-loyalists.

He had to dethrone Sesshomaru.

* * *

The dagger wound would not have been fatal to an inuyoukai, but to a human the wound was substantial and would be, eventually, a mortal injury. The little blade had pierced Tsukiyume's stomach and some of her intestines. The resulting release of bacteria into her still-human body made her condition steadily worsen as the nighttime came on.

For the first time since their wedding reception, Shimofuri and Amagumori stayed in the same room with one another for an extended period of time hovering over Tsukiyume's bed. Amagumori cried quietly for a time, especially when Shimofuri ordered her to recount the attack for him with as much detail as she could. He became angry with her when she was unclear or when the tears thickened, making her hard to understand. Amagumori was not a brave bitch, she was a cowering puppy. She apologized incessantly until Shimofuri told her to stop and to be silent instead.

Tsukiyume's bleeding slowed. Shimofuri ushered maids and healers in and out of the room every few minutes to check and try to purify the wound. When one of the doctors explained that there was internal bleeding as well as external, and that it would probably be fatal, Shimofuri dismissed him and sent for a different healer, this one a youkai. But the youkai took one sniff at Tsukiyume and stared dumbfounded. He had never worked with a purified hanyou before; he had never done anything to humans except dissect them out of curiosity. Shimofuri sent the youkai healer, a fox, away as well.

The vigil began. It was a simple one really: they were waiting for Tsukiyume's demonic power to return.

In the predawn hours of the night, with several braziers burning in the room flickering wildly, Tsukiyume began sweating and whimpering in fresh pain. The bacteria that had escaped into her body cavity had begun to replicate unchecked. Her human body responded with a fever. Fevers were not a normal youkai reaction, or even a hanyou one. The fever was only present as a result of Tsukiyume's pure human state. She came awake in the dull, wavering light, her eyes snapping open and her hands groping over the sheets.

"Brother! Brother!" she called for him using the most affectionate term she had and Shimofuri reached out for her hand immediately, clasping it in his own.

"I'm here, Little Sister. I haven't left you." He squeezed her hand and leaned forward to touch his lips to her hot, clammy temple. He didn't miss the way his sister's eyes roved widly, searching for him through the flickering light from the braziers. She flinched when his body drew near her face and pulled away, breathing hard.

"He's coming for us," Tsukiyume whispered.

"Who's coming?' Amagumori asked; her voice was weak and quiet.

Tsukiyume's mouth hung open, her eyes stared unseeingly. "Sesshomaru. He's coming…" She pulled on Shimofuri's hand, trying to free herself from his grasp. She moved her sweaty, moist cheek over the pillows, sheets, and blankets, whimpering.

"Lord Sesshomaru?" Amagumori asked, cocking her head in confusion. She looked to Shimofuri but he wasn't staring back at her, his attention was focused inward, thinking. "How can she know that? She's delirious." The last word was choked and Amagumori covered her lips with her hand as they quivered.

"Little Sister," Shimofuri called out to her, trying to grab her attention with his suddenly loud, powerful voice, "What is he coming for?"

"Sasugainu is against all of us," Tsukiyume announced, her voice growing loud and shrill, "Brother! Brother! Watch Amagumori! Watch over her!"

A tremor passed through her body and she gave a tiny, peeping cry before her body shuddered into limpness. Her eyelids drifted closed, her head slumped onto the covers and pillows.

Shimofuri frowned and released his sister's hand. He fought the desire to look up at Amagumori, his estranged wife-cousin hybrid. Was Tsukiyume channeling her flighty prophetic powers as she had in the past, or was she spouting delirious gibberish? He'd struggled to connect the wolf youkai that had attacked Tsukiyume with their treacherous uncle, but why would Sasugainu attempt to kill Tsukiyume? Wasn't his plan to kill Amagumori to frame Shimofuri and take over the Nanka, and through it, all of the Middle Lands? And yet the wolf youkai had not gone after Amagumori, he'd ignored her completely.

It was entirely possible that Tsukiyume was a victim of prejudice. The wolf could have attacked her simply because she was hanyou. It had happened before with such simple, stupid motives, and it would undoubtedly happen again.

But the dagger hardly made sense to him. The attacker was either too smart or simply stupid. If the wolf had a blind, ignorant hatred of hanyou he might use the purifying dagger assuming that it would kill her the same way it would kill a pureblooded demon. But if that was the case, why had he risked harming himself with such a specialized weapon? It seemed more likely that he _knew_ the effect it would have on Tsukiyume…

The door to Tsukiyume's bedchambers slid open and a male servant knelt outside, calling for Shimofuri. Irritably, Shimofuri looked up and growled, "What is it?"

"There are visitors to see you."

"Tell them I am indisposed," Shimofuri snarled.

"My lord—it's Lord Sesshomaru and his retainer."

Amagumori's gasp echoed through the silent room. Her blue-gray eyes shone with sudden fear when Shimofuri at last gave in and met her searching stare.

"I'll be right there," Shimofuri sighed, dismissing the servant with a curt motion. After the man had vanished, shuffling hurriedly down the hall back to the audience room, Shimofuri pointed rudely to Amagumori with his narrow clawed finger, as if pointing out a witch that needed to be burned. "Go and entertain them."

Amagumori nodded obediently, though when she bowed to him she was shaking like an aspen leaf caught in a windstorm. "Yes, Husband."

Alone in the room with his shivering, sweating sister, Shimofuri stared at her tight, uncomfortable expression, the pale orb of her face, and the graying circles beneath her eyes. Pursing his lips and blinking viciously at the burn coming from behind his eyes, Shimofuri searched for her hand among the furs and sheets of her bed. When he found it he pulled on it, squeezing hard. "I have to go for a little while, Sister. I'm very sorry."

He closed his eyes, summoning several long, deep breaths. "Pray for me in your sleep. If the spirits come for you while I'm away—" he cut himself off, swallowing thickly. Opening his eyes, Shimofuri let go of her with one hand and reverently touched her brow, brushing aside the thick moisture beading there and touching her hair with the same tenderness that he would one day offer to his own pups. "Stay here, Little Sister. Just stay here."

* * *

It was dark and cold inside the Shimofuri's audience room. After the servant, groggy and freshly awakened for the morning, left Sesshomaru and Jaken inside the audience room time slowed to a crawl. There was only one brazier, barely lit in the far corner. It was blurry in Sesshomaru's vision—a very bad sign.

When the tea didn't come to distract them, Jaken shifted uneasily. The toad chortled, "Perhaps he doesn't have a cook!"

Sesshomaru focused on the brazier, on the orange-yellow light of the open flame. It leapt up, flickering strongly, and then died down in the same moment, twisting around on itself as it slowly consumed the oils and charcoal inside its bowl. The tendrils of flame cast off a light that blurred at the edges of Sesshomaru's eyes. The light had a halo. The sharpness and clarity of his eyesight was failing. That was a trait he experienced during outbursts of rage, exposure to spiritual power, or when he was exhausted. Eyesight was not his most important feature or power, the disruption could mean nothing and it could be ignored.

But the room felt very cold. Was that right? Sesshomaru was not easily chilled…

The door at last slid open and Jaken squawked with surprise, prostrating himself immediately as the groggy servant reappeared and announced that Shimofuri's wife was entering the room. Sesshomaru did not bother with a bow, he almost never did.

Lady Amagumori bowed low and properly, begging her audience's forgiveness for her husband's tardiness. Shimofuri was "indisposed." Amagumori's blue-gray eyes, colored like slate or like aquamarine, examined Sesshomaru openly but when he returned her looks the lady averted her gaze quickly and made little nervous motions with her hands, almost flittering, while she continued to speak about everything and nothing. Her cheeks pinked.

_A fine actress, _Sesshomaru thought.

The light was too dim in the room, but the sound was too loud, crackling and hissing. Combined with Amagumori's high, polite and tinny voice, Sesshomaru felt his forehead constrict, starting a headache. He rarely suffered headaches. It was usually a sign of exhaustion when he had been fighting or teleporting too much over too-far a distance.

He _had_ rushed to get to the Nanka and Shimofuri's castle within it. Was that it?

"I recall that Lord Sesshomaru traveled so kindly to visit me on my wedding day. Lord Sesshomaru brought with him the sweetest, most precious child that I have ever seen. And she had such a lovely name, young Lady Saya. I have heard nothing but good things about Lord Sesshomaru's family…" Amagumori prattled onward. To her far left, sitting near the doorway, the servant that had first greeted Jaken and Sesshomaru was now dozing off as a testament to just how boring, and early in the morning, their current meeting was.

Jaken cleared his throat when Amagumori paused from gushing about what she'd heard about Saya and politely asked, "My lady, I wouldn't be troubling you would I if I asked for some tea?"

"Of course not!" Amagumori gawked at the toad for a moment and then broke her bubbly, stupid show for the first time since she'd come into the room by frowning at the sleepy servant that was sitting beside the door. She changed her tone into a sharper one of command and hurled the suggestion at him to wake him without actually getting up: "Our _guests_ would like some _tea!"_

The servant snapped awake and bowed, disappearing out the door as fast as he could. He left the door open behind him, letting Sesshomaru and Jaken hear the commotion of maids outside the hall, their feet pattering on the floorboards.

"I do apologize," Amagumori began in a sweet, girlish tone. "It is just so uncommon for us to get visitors at such an early hour indeed! I'm sure the tea was just delayed…"

Jaken sat back with a self-important, smug look on his face. "It's unacceptable to leave guests such as ourselves unattended!"

Amagumori's lips thinned and her slate-gray eyes flicked toward Sesshomaru, who had not spoken a single word since arriving. "I—I do apologize. We…" her voice quivered now with real feeling, "It was a difficult day for us yesterday."

Shimofuri appeared at the door suddenly, unannounced and looming. Unlike Sesshomaru with his fair skin and white hair, Shimofuri was dark haired. The contrast between his pale skin, his blue-black hair, and the turquoise streaks over his cheeks, was more alarming than Sesshomaru's consistent paleness. Stiff and somber, Shimofuri took up his spot at Amagumori's side, close to her but slightly in front. Jaken bowed to him but Sesshomaru merely averted his eyes, focusing on the brazier's dull light again.

"Sesshomaru," Shimofuri purposefully left out the proper title and stared rudely at the other inuyoukai lord. "Why have you come to see me?"

Gradually, taking his time, Sesshomaru turned his gaze back toward the center platform. First he examined Amagumori at Shimofuri's side. The young lord's wife was fair with her white hair and blue eyes and two jagged green marks over each cheek. Except for the bluer hue to her eyes she was similar to Ginrei, except that Ginrei was prettier with finer, more ideal feminine features. Amagumori's face was too round, making her look puffy, almost fat. Ginrei had a longer face, giving her an agile, graceful appearance that Sesshomaru could actually appreciate because Rin shared some of the same features.

Sitting beside Amagumori, Shimofuri was darker and statuesque, growing more impressive as he aged and entered his prime with his glossy blue-black hair and the sharp, keen gray eyes. Sesshomaru tasted the bitterness in his mouth and frowned for a microsecond just as he drew in his breath to begin speaking, "I have come to speak with your sister."

Sesshomaru had anticipated the sour, outraged expression that passed over the young lard's face at his request, but he hadn't guessed that Amagumori would react as well. The inuyoukai woman averted her eyes, halfway ducking her entire upper body over just to hide her face. Sesshomaru saw her bite her lower lip and hold onto it, as if she were a child about to endure a shot at the doctor's office. Was she anticipating Shimofuri's outburst, or was there something he was missing?

"My sister is indisposed," Shimofuri spat, narrowing his eyes dangerously. "She was attacked today while she was worshipping at the temple. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you Lord Sesshomaru?"

Discreetly, Sesshomaru tried to inhale deeply, searching for evidence to back up Shimofuri's claim. Amagumori's reaction gave it credit, but Sesshomaru was determined not to come up with a false, premeditated answer. If Shimofuri, Amagumori, and Tsukiyume had cooperated to arrange the attack on him and then worked out another event that would convince Sesshomaru of their innocence then there was every likelihood that Tsukiyume was sleeping in her bedchambers happily at that very moment.

But if it was true it would appear that Tsukiyume had been telling him the truth at her brother's wedding. Sasugainu was their enemy, and he was attacking them both at the same time within hours of each other.

Though he tried twice in the long pause that followed Shimofuri's demand, Sesshomaru found that his nose was weak. It was as if he were breathing in the fire again. The smell of the brazier, Jaken's scent, and the individual scents of Shimofuri and Amagumori were the only things that he picked up. Normally he could scent to such a depth that he might be able to pick out Amagumori's tears, Jaken's fear, and even the scents of the human servants and maids passing in the hallway outside.

It was just like his eyes, blurred.

Sesshomaru felt his scalp prickle with the first real fear that he'd felt in years.

His nose never dulled, not even when he was exhausted. His sense of smell was first and foremost, it didn't begin to fade unless death was hovering nearby. When his father Inutaisho had stood on the beach for their last conversation, Sesshomaru had known it would be their last exchange of words because his father had not been able to scent his approach clearly. It was a surefire way to tell a dog demon's likelihood of surviving an injury, whether or not he could scent anything more than his own blood.

"I know nothing of the attack on Tsukiyume," he said, speaking with a careful slowness, trying to hide his nervousness, "I would like to see her."

"She can't talk to you." Shimofuri leaned forward, scowling openly. "I am here with you now against my will, away from her bedside. If you truly wish to see my sister, you will have to wait until she recovers enough to speak with you. If you are not willing to wait, then I wish you good day." Shimofuri bowed slightly and started to haul himself to his feet, eager to be away from Sesshomaru, back at his sister's bedside.

"We will wait then," Sesshomaru answered swiftly, before Shimofuri could leave the room.

Jaken's mouth fell open and he stared with his bulging yellow eyes at his lord, astounded. "We will?"

With his back to his guests, a very rude thing to do, Shimofuri gestured angrily with one hand. "Fine. Amagumori—show our guests to a room."

Just as Shimofuri had left and Amagumori was getting to her feet to lead them away, the servants appeared through the door with plates carrying tea and some rice. Amagumori sat back down and gave her best hostess's smile, calm, cool, and collected. "Ah! The tea has finally arrived! Just in time for breakfast. Lord Sesshomaru, Jaken—I would be honored if both of my guests joined me here to eat and drink…"

Normally Sesshomaru would've turned her down, disgusted with the food, especially with its tardiness. Now, however, as the tray was placed before him, Sesshomaru felt his gut stir with _need._ He didn't often eat because he was physically hungry. After attaining maturity inuyoukai only ate when they really needed to. Their bodies dictated when that was with powerful drives that usually called for blood and raw, still-hot meat. But the rice and the aromatic scent of the tea cleared his head for a moment as he scented them. Normally tea was too hot or too strong for his nose and his sense of taste. Now, like his eyes and his nose, it was dimmed and he was _hungry…_

Jaken started to speak, trying to politely dismiss Amagumori's offer for food. He was accustomed to speaking for Sesshomaru in many situations because ultimately if Sesshomaru didn't have to speak he would avoid it and stay silent. "We are insulted by the lateness of this—"

Sesshomaru interrupted Jaken's huffy, haughty pronouncement, overruling it in his own cold, deep voice. "We will eat with you, Lady Amagumori."

As Jaken stammered embarrassedly, apologizing and changing his story to fit his lord's real opinion again, Sesshomaru reached for the tea, whisking it into a foam. The steam rose up, warm and enticing. His body was cold, heavy. His palms were beginning to sweat. They stuck to the porcelain of the teacup. He tried to think about Shimofuri's failure to address him with the proper title, he thought of Amagumori's prattling, and of the kitsune that he had torn apart and incinerated in the mountains the day before. The emotions at his core that should've brought on his strength and steadied his mind to a needle's edge were completely missing, clouded over.

As he swallowed the tea in a few thirsty gulps, aware in a distracted way that it was _not like him to drink so hurriedly and with such need_, he noted that his arms and his chest—his ribs—were beginning to ache. It was a deep sensation, less of an ache actually and more of a _burning…_

On his forearm, beneath his long, silken white haori sleeves, the tiny red dot where the thorn had pierced his skin was already scabbed over and gone. It would leave no trace in just a few hours.

_The illness is already inside you;_ the kitsune girl's voice echoed inside his brain. _You're going to die._

* * *

Rin knew she was pregnant the moment her monthly bleeding didn't arrive. Although it was still slightly early for her to begin, she knew that Koeru's potion had worked and that Sesshomaru's seed had taken root inside of her finally.

She woke feeling slightly bloated and very thirsty. She skipped her bath that morning and indulged in a larger breakfast than usual. When Ginrei didn't finish everything on her plate right away, Rin did it for her. It was too soon for her to know for certain that she was pregnant. Her period could come late, it did that all the time, but nonetheless Rin was overjoyed and overeager.

She failed to notice the small frowns and stares she drew from Ginrei.

Nearly a week had passed since Sesshomaru had left Jouka to escape Ginrei's scent. Rin expected that soon, as summer ripened and grew into its hottest months, that he would return to her and tell her with his nose for certain, affirming her suspicions and hopes. The child would be a boy, and it would be pureblooded, _Sesshomaru's heir._

In preparation, Rin asked one of the stable keepers to carve her a small wooden platform and some figurines. She sent the maids with money to buy incense. When all of it was put together Rin would construct a small, personal shrine to the goddess of fertility that had given her the child that would, in its own way, seal her own immortality. She would be Sesshomaru's chosen, preferred lover—his _only_ lover—and the mother of the heir for the entirety of the Western Lands.

At night, before bed, she began practicing the calligraphy to spell the name properly. Saya joined her, wrapping her small arms around Rin from behind. The motion jarred Rin's hands, smudging one of the shapes. For a moment she frowned irritably and then just as quickly she relaxed and set the brush and the paper aside. She turned around and grabbed Saya at the waist, tickling her.

Saya squealed and struggled, giggling. When she broke free of Rin's grip and ran to the bed to perch there, watching her mother warily with her wide, gold eyes, Rin threw up her hands in defeat. "You got away fair and square, Saya. I concede defeat!"

Saya cocked her head at Rin, confused. "What is _conceded?"_ she repeated the foreign word, tasting it as if it were a food she were unsure of.

"That word means _admit_ or…" Rin fumbled for more explanations of synonyms, "…tell the truth?"

"Oh," Saya nodded importantly and then lifted her hands up. They were clasped around the white stone that Aojiroi the fox had given her. "Do you think the Fox was _conceding _me? About the stone, Mamma?"

Rin shook her head, laughing. "Foxes have a lot of magic. I'm sure once you find the right kind it will work and you'll see he was telling the truth."

Saya flopped over onto her side and lifted the rock up and over her face, examining it. "Mamma, when will Father come home?"

"I don't know, but I hope it's soon."

"Me too," Saya murmured. She stared up at the white stone and concentrated carefully on it, narrowing her eyes at it as if it'd made her angry. She clutched it tightly in her small fist and imagined her father's face, serene and calm as he sat with her, touching her hair, sharing his food with her. In her mind where it was safe to do such things, she thought about her father not with the proper terms that Rin and Ginrei insisted that she use when she spoke of him or to him, but with informal ones like _Daddy._ She would cuddle with him the way that she cuddled with her mother at night without having Rin warn her that she was _pestering_ her father, her _daddy._

Soon Rin had coaxed Saya into bed and doused the light from the braziers. They fell quickly into sleep; mother and daughter snuggled into and around one another. Rin curled her body protectively over her tiny child, stroking her silky, smooth white hair as they lied silently in the dark, waiting for sleep to guide them to a new day.

It didn't guide Rin immediately into the new day; instead it took a longer detour where she found herself lying in her bed, unable to move, paralyzed by the heaviness and immobility of sleep. The room was dark, but with the foreknowledge of all dreamers, Rin understood that the darkness was not empty. It was not her bedroom that sprawled out beyond her futon. When she moved her hand over her bed, gritting her teeth to inch her palm over the sheets, Saya was not there.

She whimpered, instantly shaking with fear for her daughter. She tried to speak Saya's name, but it came out flat and indistinguishable from a faint cry for help. Her palm clutched at the empty covers, the coldness of the bed.

Voices began around the bed, echoing out of the darkness, circling around her like sharks eager for a bloodbath. Though she searched over the blackness her eyes didn't come up with any source, only the occasional flash of movement.

"_She's a troublemaker isn't she? She can't seem to play by the rules."_

"_Daughter! Be careful! So much hangs in the balance…"_

"_This cannot be allowed to go on! She must be destroyed! Abomination! Abomination!"_

"_You cannot stop Fate. It will always do as it pleases. There is purpose in everything."_

There were at least three different voices, talking back and forth around her to one another and seemingly to her or to themselves. Rin closed her eyes, trying to lift her head to see more clearly into the darkness.

"_What of Sesshomaru?"_

"_Abomination! This cannot be allowed! It breaks all the natural laws!"_

"_Sesshomaru must survive on his own."_

"_Abomination!"_

"_What must be, will be. The imbalance of power will correct itself at last."_

A gray shape lunged out at Rin from the darkness, smashing her against the bed. She gasped only to find that her lungs were crushed to the mattress, unable to flex enough to draw another breath…

"_Abomination!"_

Rin shot up into a sitting position, her hands flew to her neck and touched the skin there as she drew in several long breaths and realized that she had been dreaming. The darkness around her bed was still heavy and all-consuming, but now Rin could make out the light coming through the walls and from outside her window from the moonlight.

Saya was curled into a fetal position, jerking reflexively in her sleep, safe and warm.

Rin sighed and laid back down, wrapping her arms around Saya and closing her eyes, trying to banish the dream from her mind. Almost nightly she suffered a nightmare. Usually it was a dream that centered around a memory of pain or violence from her past, but always the dreams had the strange voices, the strange talking that she didn't understand. Sometimes Saya acted as the body of the speaker, saying things like, _"She killed you, Rin. You let her kill you!"_

She twined Saya's hair between her fingers and thought of the strange voices in this dream. _What of Sesshomaru? Sesshomaru must survive on his own. _Was the great and powerful lord of the Western Lands somehow in a lot of danger? It seemed unlikely to Rin, just a silly sentence inserted into her dream world to frighten her.

* * *

A/N And next time:

_Disturbed, Sasugainu changed subjects, "When will this new child of mine arrive?"_

"_I will carry her here by sunset."_

_Sasugainu sat up and squinted at the dim room around him. There was nothing to be seen. "What about the hanyou girl and the human woman? I could use the woman as a servant but really I don't need any more useless daughters…"_

_Jishin made a shushing sound, "You needn't worry about them. The hanyou I will turn over to nature. The woman has a destiny to fulfill…" _


	9. The Earthquake

A/N: Anyone want to wager and toss down their bets on what's eating Sesshomaru? Is it a bad cold, the influenza, rabies…? I'll only say that being a biology minor, it's just right up my alley, whatever it is.

Disclaimer: I do not own.

Last Chapter: Sasugainu's plot behind Tsuki's attempted assassination was revealed. He didn't want to kill his niece even though he was under orders to do so. Tsukiyume suffered a fever from complications to her knife wound. She predicted Sesshomaru's arrival. Amagumori "entertained" Sesshomaru and Jaken while they waited for Shimofuri who had no time or patience for Sesshomaru. Sesshomaru was more tolerant than usual because he was becoming more and more aware that something was happening inside his body. Rin had a nightmare where she heard strange voices.

* * *

**The Earthquake**

_It was dawn when Sasugainu opened his eyes, took a breath inward, and smelled Jishin. He stifled his nervous, tense reaction and called her name, "Jishin? What is it?"_

_She usually visited him at night rather than at early in the morning. The change in her routine set Sasugainu on edge. As usual he couldn't see her, but he knew that she was skulking around the darkened corners of his bedchambers. _

_The dawn light outside, coloring the screens over his window, was pink like Jishin's hair. _

"_Today will be the day that you adopt a new child, Sasugainu," Jishin said, her voice was a silky purr, like a seductress. _

"_A new child?" Sasugainu asked, frowning. _

"_Only for a time. Your new wife will come shortly after. Then you can arrange an alliance with your cousins in the north, Lady Yamome and Arasoizuki's son. It will bring peace and stability." The smile in her voice was clear and hard. _

"_Good," Sasugainu answered simply, almost as if he weren't interested. Then, after a moment of cautious thought, Sasugainu asked, "Is everything going ahead as scheduled?"_

"_You must summon your daughter Soeki back to this castle. You will need her here as a caretaker for your new wife and daughter," Jishin murmured and then her voice changed into a tone of irritation. "Your assassin failed. Your niece is still alive, injured and sick I've heard, but still alive. She's probably healing right as we speak."_

_Sasugainu closed his eyes, trying to feign disappointment, but what really passed through his mind was relief. "She's just a worthless hanyou, she can't set us back. What of Sesshomaru?"_

_Jishin laughed in a voice that rang like chimes in a summertime wind, or like a church bell rattled during an earthquake. "He has been taken care of. My kitsune lured him in easily, but she didn't survive his retaliation. A shame, I suppose." She didn't sound sorry, only disappointed. _

_Disturbed, Sasugainu changed subjects, "When will this new child of mine arrive?"_

"_I will carry her here by sunset."_

_Sasugainu sat up and squinted at the dim room around him. There was nothing to be seen. "What about the hanyou girl and the human woman? I could use the woman as a servant but really I don't need any more useless daughters…"_

_Jishin made a shushing sound, "You needn't worry about them. The hanyou I will turn over to nature. The woman has a destiny to fulfill…" _

_Sasugainu frowned confusedly, "Jishin, what do you mean by that—?"_

_The air in his bedchambers circulated wildly for a moment, whooshing past his ears and riffling his smooth white hair. Jishin had vanished, keeping her secrets for another day. Sasugainu laid back down on his bed and breathed a long, heavy sigh of relief._

* * *

As the fiery dawn reached its first tendrils of light into the castle in the Nanka Tsukiyume twisted violently in her sweaty, filthy bed sheets. The bandages over her wound fell free, caked with old, thick dry blood. Her wounds beneath were still oozing blood. Shimofuri watched over her with a somber, serious set to his jaw. The corners of his eyes crinkled in sympathy pain when Tsukiyume cried out, when her arms flailed blindly through the sheets and the air. He snatched one of them when it came his way and held onto it, trying to steady her.

At last her hand clenched up on his own, forming a bone-wrenching grip that popped a few of his knuckles. Then Tsukiyume fell back, limp and breathing hard. Atop her black hair now two white dog ears were perched, drooping with exhaustion. The sweat coated her brow like condensation on a cup of ice water left out in a hot room. Her eyes opened slowly, weakly. Her lips curled into a smile when she recognized Shimofuri at her bedside.

"Brother…"

Shimofuri nodded and squeezed her hand. "Yes, I'm here—how are you feeling? Is your wound…" he gestured cautiously toward her side and Tsukiyume lifted her head, trying to examine it for herself.

The wound had closed over and ceased bleeding with her transformation. There was hideous bruising around the wound where blood had leaked into her skin and beneath it. Tsukiyume cringed and looked away from it, biting her lip when it started quivering. "Who…?"

"We don't know. A wolf youkai is what Amagumori says."

"Where…?"

"He got away from us." Shimofuri frowned, his jaw muscles flickering beneath his skin.

"I meant Amagumori." Tsukiyume smiled weakly and squeezed on Shimofuri's hand when he looked away. "You're not very nice to her."

"I'm going to annul the marriage as soon as I can. I'll claim she's frigid." He looked down at his feet, embarrassed by his admission. For him to do such a thing was to possibly destroy any chances for Amagumori to ever marry again. If she was frigid, what purpose was there for her in a marriage? She would refuse to have pups for her husbands. It was a grave accusation.

Tsukiyume shivered where she lay and her eyes drifted partially shut. Shimofuri shook her hand, trying to reawaken her. "Tsuki, Tsuki—Sesshomaru is here like you said he would be. He wants to speak with you."

His sister's orange eyes snapped open wide with shock. "I said…?"

Shimofuri's expression hardened, darkening as he read the meaning in her two simple, confused words. Tsukiyume had no recollection of making such a prediction. That meant that she had been channeling a higher power while she was delirious and suffering. She had done it before while awake, asleep, or delirious, in any state of mind. Shimofuri took it as a sign that he really would have to let Sesshomaru in to see his vulnerable sister. "Yes, you predicted that he'd come about two minutes before he arrived. He's here in the castle, waiting to speak with you." Shimofuri shook his head, "It seems strange to me…"

"What?" she asked, croaking.

"He's waiting to see you, and he had breakfast with Amagumori." The way that Shimofuri curled his upper lip after speaking gave the impression that he felt betrayed or offended by his cousin-wife's involvement.

"You're afraid," Tsukiyume smirked, though the expression became more of a grimace partway through.

Shimofuri glared at her, annoyed at the accusation. "I am afraid for you, with your wounds, if Sesshomaru tried to take you away…"

Tsukiyume shook her head against the pillows. "No, let me see him."

"You should sleep first, Little Sister," Shimofuri told her, frowning.

Her clawed hand fumbled through the blankets and her body rolled toward him slightly. She grasped his hakama pant legs as he started to rise. "Let him see me. He is not your enemy, Brother. Not anymore."

* * *

In the afternoon after the children's lessons, Rin and Ginrei again sat on the grassy field outside of the Jouka palace. The day was calm. White, puffy clouds that were strongly reminiscent of Sesshomaru's own "fluff," crossed the bright, dazzling blue sky with the ease and grace of a slow wind.

Under the influence of the sunlight and the happy laughter of the girls, Rin gave in to the desire to lounge on the thick, green grass. It was fresh and lush, only recently laying down its roots for the short active summer months to come. Rin listened to Saya and Hanone while her eyes drifted closed, contented and sleepy.

Ginrei was with her, quiet, a short distance away. Although Rin couldn't see it, Ginrei was staring at her. Inwardly the inuyoukai woman was wrestling with the desire to speak to Rin, to question her. Ginrei's expression was stormy, moving from blank one moment to confused or upset the next.

"Sister!" Saya was shouting in the distance. "Sister, run as fast as you can! I'm going to get you!" The sisters raced off, streaks of white hair and dirt-smeared, grass-scuffed clothing and skin. Ginrei watched them with a nervous thinning of her lips and then turned her attention back to Rin with that same worried expression.

"Lady Rin?"

"Yes?" the other woman replied, flicking at the blades of grass absently with one finger.

"Your…your scent has changed over the past few days."

Rin's fingers on the grass stopped. She opened her brown eyes and smiled, though with her back facing Ginrei no one but the ants could see it. "What do you mean?" she asked, trying to sound casual, not itchy with excitement as she was. _I'm pregnant. She's going to say I'm pregnant. _

Rin had hoped that Sesshomaru would arrive home and be the first to notice and confirm her suspicion, but Ginrei was still an inuyoukai, it would be hard to doubt her nose. She had had few, if any signs to confirm her own suspicion that she was pregnant, only the lateness of her monthly bleeding and a slight increase of hunger and thirst. She wondered when Sesshomaru would return to her and when she could learn with certainty that the child inside her was not another hanyou like Saya, but a son of pure blood like Sesshomaru himself, a little copy of her mate growing within her, the future lord of the Western Lands.

"I'm not sure," Ginrei began with an odd, quiet lilt to her voice. "I think you are carrying a child—but I am concerned for you, Lady Rin."

A mixture of alarm and irritation bubbled through Rin. "You have nothing to be concerned about," she snapped, pushing herself up with one arm to glare over her shoulder at Ginrei.

Ginrei was staring at her. The inuyoukai woman's silver eyes had no obvious malice or jealousy, but Rin _wanted_ to see those emotions there, they would make sense. Instead what she saw was fear and worry, the very concern that Ginrei herself had admitted to.

"It's not your scent really," Ginrei elaborated, choosing her words carefully. "It's the child's. It has a scent that…"

Rin turned around and moved closer to Ginrei. Her shoulders were tensed; the muscles in her neck corded as she tilted her head to one side and glared at Ginrei. "Is it a boy?"

Ginrei flinched backward, shaking her head. "It should be too soon for me to tell, but that's just it, that's just what's wrong with it. Your scent and the child's are…" Ginrei swallowed nervously, "Wrong! The scents are wrong!"

Rin sat back onto the grass, letting her shoulders slump though the tension had not left her neck or the rest of her body. "How is it wrong?"

"It's too fast, it's unnatural," Ginrei stammered. "I only barely noticed that your scent had changed a few days ago and now already I can smell the child too. The progression is too rapid—unless that is natural for humans…"

"Maybe it is," Rin murmured, stiffly. Inwardly her mind was spinning, remembering the earthy, herbal tea that Koeru had told her to drink, a potion that had promised to make her conceive Sesshomaru's _pureblooded_ child. Out of hope Rin had done everything Koeru had advised, but she'd never believed on some level that the child would be any different. She had hoped with a sort of delirious wonder that Koeru would deliver on all of her promises, but at the same time she had not allowed herself to think about it very much, not allowed herself to hope. Now Ginrei's words seemed like a dream, or perhaps a nightmare, she wasn't sure which just yet. _How could an ordinary human woman carry an inuyoukai in her womb?_ There would be consequences, Rin expected that, but it was unnerving to realize that she had noticed virtually nothing different, nothing wrong…in fact she felt better with this pregnancy than she had with her others, including Saya.

"Rin," Ginrei dropped any proper formality of a title and reached out to squeeze the other woman's arm. "I'm really afraid—it's _unnatural_ but…"

"But what, Ginrei?" Rin snapped, shrugging the inuyoukai woman's hand from her shoulder. "Just say whatever you're trying to say."

Ginrei pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes with difficulty. "The child smells to me like Hanone. Like an inuyoukai, not like an inuhanyou. And that's impossible. I—I thought I was wrong for a long time, but every day I sit with you and smell the same thing."

_Koeru,_ Rin closed her eyes, her shoulders started to shake, _thank you._

"Don't worry about it, Ginrei." Rin pushed herself to her feet and started walking toward the palace, her bare feet riffling the green blades of grass.

"Where are you going?" Ginrei asked, halfway rising to follow her.

"I'm just going to lie down. Don't come after me, stay here with Hanone and Saya."

As she walked, Rin laid her hand over her belly, feeling the slight bulge there. She didn't feel particularly bloated, and there were no uterine cramps. Her head felt a little heavy, filled with fatigue and lethargy, but otherwise she felt surprisingly well. Her appetite had increased, but there was no sign of the characteristic nausea of early pregnancy. The child growing within her was an easy blessing.

At the verandah around Jouka palace, Rin paused and stared back at Ginrei and their daughters. Saya was leading the way in what might've been a game of tag. She had already sprouted long, confident legs, able, supple muscles in her arms, and the balance of a gymnast. Hanone toddled after her older sister, screeching and yapping like a dog. Saya slowed purposefully, dodging when Hanone leapt at her. They wheeled in circles around one another, playing a predator's game, stalking one another. Saya took off then, ending the tight-cornered exercise in agility and beginning a different one that was concerned only with speed. They raced toward the little brook and when Ginrei shouted at them to stay away from the water; they obeyed as one, changing direction like a flock of birds.

Rin smiled to herself and climbed the stairs, stepping out of the sun and into the sheltered insides of the palace. As she slid the door open to her bedchambers and looked up, Rin froze, holding her breath. In the corner where she had set up the small shrine for Koeru, she saw a black shadow, hovering over it.

Her heart thumped, losing its steady beat for a moment. Rin gasped, clutching at her chest. Her eyes were wide, pointed at the black shape. _Koeru…?_

A voice reached out to her, entering her mind, speaking in the same deep, mature voice that Koeru had used in her dreams: _You may call me Jishin now._

The floor began to vibrate beneath Rin's feet. At first she thought that the sensation was an imagined one, brought on by the sudden double-beating of her heart, but that illusion was shattered when a jolt passed through the earth and knocked Rin onto her knees. She cried out, startled and struggling to raise her head to see the shadow of the creature hovering over her shrine. "What is—"

The voice came through her head, hissing with a sadistic delight. _You have the child you wished for inside you. Now I have come to take the payment that is owed to me._

"The shrine…" Rin stammered, staring.

The shadow moved, falling over the little unfinished shrine, enclosing it inside the darkness. In the same moment the palace began to shake, jostled from side to side as if the entire mountainside had awakened and decided to shed the palace from its side like a dog shakes water from its coat. Rin clawed at the floor with her blunt fingernails. The floor tilted sideways, wood cracked with shattering sound. Floorboards bent and then angled upward in front of Rin's face as they were snapped.

The shrine fell over and slid toward Rin, ready to smash into her. She lifted her hands, cowering just before the impact. The rectangles that she had written on flew into her face, smacking into her. An inkwell spilled and a black trail rolled over the rich, red-brown floorboards, seeping into the newly created cracks.

Rin saw the black shadow still sitting in the corner where the shrine had been. She watched it while she tried to push the shrine off of her.

The earth quivered again even more fiercely. A beam fell into the palace, cracking the floor. Rin gave up on watching the shadowy shape and ducked low, covering her head as more debris began to fall around her. With her arms close around her, Rin heard herself screaming uncontrollably, as well as the rasp of her thick breathing.

On her closed eyelids, Rin saw Koeru smiling in a wide, sick grin, leering at her. The long, flowing pink hair had changed, the roots were red now, a dark ugly crimson like half-dried blood. _What a shame, you never said goodbye to your hanyou._

_Saya!_

Rin squirmed, but her own movements were pathetic and feeble around her as the palace continued to crumble and fall on top of her. When she closed her eyes, Rin saw flashes of the bright, mocking sunlight outside. She saw the earth convulse, the green grass torn up as the ground writhed beneath it. The brook fell, imploding. The water sprayed, rocks clattered and tumbled.

She saw Ginrei screaming, stumbling over the rippling ground. Hanone fell in a roll backward, her small body splashing into the water with the rocks. Ginrei screeched, screaming in maternal agony, lunging after her child, half falling and half leaping into the small river after her. Saya was left alone, clinging to the grass with her little clawed hands.

The water in the river began to seep into the earth. A crack opened up as rocks crumbled and fell into the streambed. Hanone had vanished but Ginrei was floundering, clutching at the ground. Her robes were soaked; her hair was plastered to her back and forehead. She gritted her sharp, white teeth together.

Saya's support, little more than grass roots, gave way. As the earth convulsed again she fell into the chasm where the stream had been, disappearing with Hanone.

Rin scrabbled at the debris around her, screaming incoherently in her desperation. The woman's voice returned to her, laughingly. _Fear not Lady Rin. You still have your son safe inside you. What does the hanyou matter?_

"No!" Rin shouted. The ground continued to vibrate beneath her, but now it had quieted. The quake was passing; the aftershocks were all that remained. _This wasn't the agreement!_

_I am a goddess. You should have known better than to accept a bargain that broke the natural laws, foolish little woman. _

"My baby!" Rin howled, clawing at the shivering floorboards beneath her and pushing against the rubble that had fallen around her, pinning her into one corner of the hallway outside of her bedchambers. "You killed my baby!"

_I did no such thing._

Something shifted and some of the debris fell away. Sunlight peeked in and Rin crawled for it, pushing and fighting. She tasted dirt and wooden grit from the palace. Smoke began to fill her nose and she coughed, her throat stinging. "Saya!"

Through the light and her small, narrow view of the collapsed palace, Rin saw Koeru. The short, petite goddess was red-haired now, solemn but with a gleam of mischief in her eye. "Stay put for a while, Lady Rin. I must speak with Lord Sesshomaru's beautiful wife."

"Where is Saya?" Rin screamed. Her voice was raspy, her throat was raw. "Where is my baby?"

"You have the important one inside of you, Lady Rin. The hanyou I have given to the human world. She has entered Nature. If she is as fit as you believe her to be, she will survive."

Rin reached through the narrow space where the sunlight peaked through the rubble, slashing at Koeru. She spat out an empty, helpless threat, "You can't _do_ this! I'll kill you…"

Koeru grinned. "Good day for now Lady Rin. I must tell Lady Ginrei where she will find her precious child—and who she has to thank for this mess. You, of course."

"No!" Rin screeched. She sat up, bumping her head against a fallen beam. The world spun and, when it stilled, she saw that Koeru had vanished. Rin's shoulders began to tremble. She covered her face with her hands and felt her tears mixing with the wood dust and the dirt. "No, no, no, no…"

* * *

As soon as the earth had stopped its uncontrolled spasm, Ginrei got to her feet and leapt toward the chasm where the river had been. The river was where the fault had been created. The half of the river where Jouka palace rested on its grassy field had sunk while the mountainous, wooded side had risen by several feet. Ginrei raced along this new edge, leaving her booted footprints in the wet sand where the river water had once coursed up to her calves. She screamed her daughter's name over and over again, heedless of anything or anyone else.

There were several spots where the little cliff that ran over the river's course opened up into a little pit. The black holes were not very wide but Ginrei stopped at each and yelled into them, searching. When nothing came out but the sound of distant, trickling water, Ginrei would actually try to squeeze herself into the holes. In the few that she could fit inside, she found that they narrowed and came to abrupt ends only a few feet inside. Her palms, her robes, and her feet were coated in slick, thick mud and water. The water trickled over the rocks under the ground. The brook had been disrupted by the quake, forced to travel underground.

After squeezing herself into the largest hole and finding nothing, Ginrei hauled herself back out and found two things that were unusual. The first was that there was a strange, small woman with fiery red hair standing three feet in front of her. The second was that Jouka palace was on fire and in ruins.

Snarling, Ginrei faced the strange, red-haired woman. "Who are you?"

"My name is Jishin. I am a goddess of the earth."

Ginrei inferred quickly the significance of the earth goddess's presence and the fact that the earth had just suffered a massive upheaval. "You did this?" she demanded, gesturing at the little rift-cliff that ran in a straight line along where the river had once flowed.

"I exacted a punishment on Lady Rin for her crimes against nature." Jishin lifted one hand and pointed toward the burning, ruined palace. "You know of the crimes I'm speaking of. Her changed scent, the scent of the pureblooded child growing in her womb. She has broken the laws of Nature with dark magic and sorcery. She was jealous of you, jealous that only you could bear Lord Sesshomaru's heirs."

Ginrei's hands curled into fists. "You took my child!"

"Young Lady Hanone is very safe," Jishin announced, smiling warmly. "I have no reason to harm your child and I would never do such a thing. I am here, Lady Ginrei, to help you. I have taken your daughter away from this place. She is in the safety of the Middle Lands, in the Itou province. She is being held there in safety, waiting for you to come and claim her." Jishin took a step closer to Ginrei and lowered her voice into a whisper, "I have freed you and your child from Sesshomaru's grasp. Hanone is now _your_ daughter once more."

Ginrei rushed for Jishin in a streak of white, but Jishin vanished, disappearing completely. Panting, Ginrei whirled around, looking for the goddess. When she saw nothing of her, Ginrei doubled over, her shoulders shaking with pain and rage. She dropped her palms to the wet sand of the riverbed and her fingers twitched and jerked. The claws began to lengthen, as did the shape of her face. Her jaw grew, filling with teeth.

In a moment her human-like characteristics had vanished and Ginrei had become a silver-white dog with pale eyes. She howled mournfully and raced toward the mountainside, away from where Jouka was burning.

* * *

The smoke was thick around Rin, obscuring the sunshine and charring her lungs. She began to weaken, laying her head against the ground, accepting that she was about to die. _Sesshomaru…_ She reached out with one small hand, imagining her lover's serene, handsome face. He had never failed to come for her or return to her before. But now her crimes, her losses, were too much, more than herself, more than Jaken. She had lost Saya…

The rubble around her abruptly fell away. Light spilled in around her. Rin coughed and looked up. She saw brown leggings. The niggling drive to survive returned to her with the light and Rin clutched at the leggings. "Help…me…"

The shape moved in front of her and Rin's body became weightless. Her stomach cramped up. The world faded in a whiteout. She remembered the sensation as one that Sesshomaru had used, carrying her through an incorporeal world. It was over before she could truly appreciate the suffering it inflicted and Rin's eyes opened on green grass and a reshaped, cracked world that moments ago her daughter had run over, laughing and happy. She laid her cheek to the scratchy grass and started to sob without tears, unable to control her breathing. _Saya…_

A booted foot landed beside her face and nudged her on the nose. Rin pulled away from it and blinked up at the owner of the boot. It was Koeru with her crown of red hair, staring down at her with a small, smug smile. "Why are you crying, Lady Rin? This is what you've always wanted."

Screaming, forgetting all of her dignity, Rin reached out with her hands curled into small fists, ready to batter Koeru to death. Her fists hit only the air though Koeru hadn't moved away from her spot at Rin's side. "I'm a goddess, you can't harm me!" Koeru taunted.

"You tricked me," Rin yelled. "What kind of goddess toys with the life she creates? Where did you take my daughter?" She pawed at the tears on her face, leaving streaks of black soot and brown dust. _Sesshomaru, where are you? I'm so sorry, my baby—our daughter is gone…_

Koeru knelt, facing Rin on her level, low with the grass and the dirt and the pill bugs. "There is an imbalance of power, and I mean to correct it. I am the goddess Koeru who gives life, but I am also the goddess Jishin who takes it away." She reached out and stroked Rin's dusty, dirtied hair, as gentle as Rin's mother had been once, long ago. Rin made a vicious face, baring her teeth, and swatted at Koeru's hand, but the touch stayed on her hair and Rin's hand passed uselessly through Koeru's wrist.

"Sesshomaru," Rin murmured, doubling over and pressing her forehead to the earth, "Please…"

Jishin-Koeru's hand on her head curled up, the fingers gripping Rin's hair just hard enough that it hurt and Rin whimpered, trying to bat the goddess away once more. But her blows were ineffective. "I'm afraid he is part of the imbalance, he is the very source of it," Jishin whispered.

_Sesshomaru…_Rin's hands fisted up in the grass, pulling dirt-sodden clumps of it up. _I'm so sorry. Please…_

"Stop crying, Lady Rin," Jishin purred, "Both of your children are alive for now. And your son Lady Rin, your son will one day rule the Western Lands."

"Tell me where Saya is," Rin ordered, lifting her head up to glare at Jishin-Koeru with a snarl.

"She is with humans, on her own. Hanyou are remarkable survivors, well, most of them are. I will tell you how she does, Lady Rin, for better or worse."

Rin reached out and snatched Jishin's leggings again, which were surprisingly solid. "_Where_ is my daughter?"

Jishin grinned sadistically. "You wish to see her again, but I'm afraid that will not happen. You are mine now, Lady Rin."

Shaking, Rin pulled away from Jishin and turned her back on the goddess, hauling herself to her feet. Her legs were weak, shaking at the knees. Rin stumbled forward as fast as she could, doing her best to run from the goddess. The palace was aflame nearby. Rin saw a servant, one of the youngest maids, lying pinned beneath a fallen beam. Black-red blood was pooled around her body. The maid's human eyes were glazed over and unseeing, lifeless.

Rin choked at the sight and continued on. Through the flames, she saw the cook's body, impaled by some of the falling wood. His legs were crushed beneath a beam as well. They were all dead. Only Rin and Ginrei had been left alive, purposefully. _This was all laid out and planned._

She collided with a solid body and fell backward, only to feel her body shift into a sickening, weightless state. When she landed on the ground it was without any impact, as gentle as if she had lowered herself with the utmost care onto a feathered quilt. Jishin was standing in front of her, holding one bare arm out with the palm facing Rin.

"You mustn't go running off like that, Lady Rin. Your place is now at my side. You are carrying my creation." Her brown-red eyes narrowed. "_I want him."_

Rin's body shook around her and over her raw throat, she screamed at Jishin: _"You can have him! Give me my daughter!"_

Jishin stepped forward and grabbed Rin's chin, sneering down at her. "You gave her to me the moment you accepted my potion. I gave you the miracle inside your womb. You're lucky, Lady Rin. You will live to see and care for Sesshomaru's heir! After all, my creation will need _someone_ to nurture him, bastard child that he will be, poor beautiful boy."

Unable to listen or comprehend Jishin's words, Rin got to her feet and started to hurry away in the opposite direction. "I'll never go with you," she whispered, more to herself than to the goddess.

Jishin appeared before her again in her solid form and Rin lashed out at her rather before she collided with her. This time Rin's blunt fingernails scratched Jishin's cheek and ripped at her red hair. The goddess blinked momentarily with surprise and touched her cheek. "Determined little bitch, aren't you?"

Rin slashed at Jishin again, her face set in a vicious snarl, but Jishin side-stepped faster than Rin could adjust her aim. The goddess laughed and appeared behind Rin's back, pushing her. Rin fell hard on the ground this time. The grass rubbed against her face, the smell of it gagged Rin. She tried to pick herself up but found that her belly was cramping up. She clutched her abdomen, breathing hard through the discomfort and pain.

"I can make this easy for you, Lady Rin—or I can make it difficult." Jishin lifted one hand and made a fist.

In that same moment agony exploded through Rin's body. She screamed, collapsing back to the grass, her eyes wide with terror, her body jerking spasmodically with pain.

"You must accept your fate. You cannot fight it." Jishin clamped hard, pressing her fingers tight together against her palm.

On the ground, Rin's pain soared until her breath caught in her throat and her eyes fluttered closed as her brain retreated, slipping out of consciousness.

* * *

After Lady Amagumori had shown Jaken and Sesshomaru to a small room where sleeping mats had been laid out—as ceremony dictated, not necessarily because of an actual need—Sesshomaru found himself knelt next to the futon, unable to think clearly.

Jaken rambled about the unusualness of their staying, and he spent a great deal of time insulting Shimofuri, Amagumori, and Tsukiyume. He talked and talked and talked, and every minute or so, glanced toward Sesshomaru with worry. He expected his lord to silence him, but Sesshomaru was distracted with some inward concern and paid him no mind at all.

But it wasn't just Sesshomaru's behavior that bothered Jaken; it was his lord's scent as well. Sesshomaru's scent had begun to change, to waver in the toad's nose. Jaken didn't have eyes that were very sharp, but in the orange light from the braziers, and then the dull blue light of dawn from the screened windows, Jaken thought he saw moisture. _Sesshomaru was sweating!_

At last he ran out of things to ramble about and, propelled by his worry and horror at his lord's inconsistent behavior, prostrated himself before Sesshomaru, begging his pardon. "My lord, please, your greatness must forgive me for doubting you, but this lowly one is concerned! Lord Sesshomaru, are you ill?"

Before Jaken was able to completely lift his head to stare into his lord's face to observe a reaction, Sesshomaru had slapped him, throwing him clear across the room. Jaken whimpered and cowered there, bowing and apologizing. After that, when Sesshomaru said nothing and didn't look at him, Jaken fell into a tense, terrified silence. He shook like the Chihuahua that has just pooped on the floor and knows that punishment is coming in the extreme.

While Jaken quivered, Sesshomaru blinked and stared at the wall. His vision wavered, as if he were looking out of a pane of glass, watching rainwater run in rivulets down it. _What is happening to me?_

The room was cold, freezing. Sesshomaru tucked his clawed hands into his haori sleeves and drew in a long, heavy breath. His ribs were burning, on fire. His legs and arms ached as well. It was growing worse with each passing hour. His head felt light, as if he had shed his bipedal form in favor of the energy bundle that he used to travel instantaneously from place to place.

Time passed awkwardly, speeding up and slowing down, dulling and sharpening. At times he heard Jaken's words and his voice as a screeching, like a crow's cawing over carrion. Other moments passed when he couldn't hear Jaken at all or didn't understand his words. He heard the language that the toad spoke as if it were not his own. The rise and fall of the pitches, the vowel and consonants noises. He heard without understanding. His mind buried itself in trivial, unimportant things, wandering like a drunken poet.

Why did scent drive inuyoukai as it did? If Sesshomaru could not smell Ginrei's pheromones, he would be free to live with her and Rin without the worry of his sexual instincts rushing to the fore and interfering with his life. Why had Saya inherited his white hair? Why was she so much stronger and better developed than Hanone? Why hadn't Ginrei borne him a son first, not a miserable, useless girl?

Soon his brain hauled in even stranger, more distant memories, questions, and details. How had his father met the human woman that mothered Inuyasha? How had Inuyasha managed to produce not one, but _two_ offspring? He recalled Inuyasha's taunting several years prior, the last time that Sesshomaru had seen Inuyasha in a structured conversation, and one of the only times they had been on a sort of even footing. Inuyasha had taunted him about his lack of offspring. Though Sesshomaru had two daughters, he regrettably had no son while Inuyasha _still_ had that fact to hold over his head. Absurdly Sesshomaru even considered rising and leaving the bedchambers to seek out his half-brother and observe him to see if he could uncover clues. What had Inuyasha gained from their father and from his human mother that allowed him such _luck?_

Why hadn't he, the great Sesshomaru, inherited his father's markings? The crescent moon and the distinctive twin slashes over his face were traits his mother had given him. He was marked more as his mother's heir, not as Inutaisho's.

When Jaken had come and babbled for his forgiveness, then asked if he was sick, Sesshomaru had hit the toad without even thinking about the action. _How dare he!_

But if it was clear to the toad, who didn't have the greatest sense of smell or sight, that Sesshomaru was not in tip-top shape, then it was apparently an obvious fact. _I should leave,_ he thought,_ Shimofuri will use my weakness to his advantage._

The door to their room opened at last and Sesshomaru jerked his head toward it, narrowing his eyes. Lady Amagumori was knelt there, bowing. "If my guests would be so gracious as to follow me, I will escort them to see Lady Tsukiyume now."

Startled, Sesshomaru glanced to the window screen. The sun had risen, white light poured in from outside. Where had the hours gone to?

Jaken was silent, waiting for Sesshomaru to speak now because he couldn't predict his lord's answers any longer.

Sesshomaru got to his feet and started to approach Amagumori. His legs ached and then stabbed with shooting pain. He tottered just as he reached the open door and shot one clawed hand out to catch himself before he fell over. Amagumori was knelt below him at the entryway, staring up at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.

"My lord…?" she asked, her voice whispering.

"Lead us to her," Sesshomaru ordered, brusquely.

Amagumori got up and started walking. Sesshomaru followed her, his jaw clenching as each step jarred his body and sent gut-wrenching pain through him. It was not a muscular pain; it was the burn of his bones. He breathed shallowly, trying to lessen the same pain in his ribs. Jaken followed them, his amphibious feet slapping on the wooden floor.

Amagumori stopped before a door and tapped it with her clawed hand. A maid reacted inside, sliding the door open. As Amagumori stepped inside, Sesshomaru paused, taking in the room. It was simple with a desk for writing or painting and a futon. The floor was laid out with matting for sitting. The screens were open, letting in the cool morning air from outside. Sesshomaru was distracted momentarily from his pain when he realized that he could _not_ smell that air.

He stepped inside and turned his attention to Tsukiyume. The hanyou girl was sitting up in her bed, propped up by pillows and blankets. Her older brother sat on one side of her, glaring at Sesshomaru with open suspicion and anger.

Sesshomaru sat down on the opposite side from Shimofuri. He ignored the way that Tsukiyume watched him, observing no doubt the signs of his bizarre illness. Sesshomaru listened to Amagumori and Jaken as they followed him, sitting behind him. With the inuyoukai all around him, and with Tsukiyume and Jaken so close, Sesshomaru felt his heart thumping in his chest. The beat was irregular, it made his breathing stilted as he worked to ignore the discomfort and oddness of it. The sensation that he was surrounded, with all the walls pressing in around him—without being able to scent any of clearly—made him feel _claustrophobic. _The feeling was brand new and Sesshomaru fought a sudden, abrupt nausea.

"Lord Sesshomaru," Tsukiyume began. Her voice was raspy and weak. Sesshomaru glanced at her side briefly and saw the way she held her arm at an awkward angle. She was supported by the pillows and blankets of her bed, as if she herself could not handle sitting upright. _She was injured, badly._ But he could not smell the blood.

It was like being blind. An entire world that he had always known before was now invisible to him.

The claustrophobia flapped inside his head, like a caged bird beating its body against the metal bars. Sesshomaru looked around him, searching for an escape route. He breathed deeply, trying to find the fresh air pouring in through the open windows.

"Lord Sesshomaru," Tsukiyume repeated his name. Her voice had grown more confident, but when Sesshomaru looked into her eyes they were glazed, turned inward. "You think you're dying."

"Silence," Sesshomaru ordered her. "Ridiculous." The spot where the kitsune girl had pricked his arm with the thorn stung, as if calling him a liar.

Across the room on the other side of the bed, Shimofuri's blue-gray eyes had widened, the anger had left his face, replaced with bafflement.

"You were lured into a trap. A kitsune poisoned you." Tsukiyume's ears were quivering, her eyes were still glazed.

Sesshomaru narrowed his eyes suspiciously but said nothing. Something moved on his brow, tickling his skin. With no small bit of alarm, Sesshomaru raised one hand and touched it. His clawed fingers came back with moisture, gleaming like a teardrop. It was a bead of sweat. Though he was aware of Shimofuri, Amagumori, Jaken, and the crazy hanyou girl watching him, even the maids in the room staring at him openly, Sesshomaru was unable to lift his eyes from the bead of sweat.

"You are not dying," Tsukiyume told him, her voice dropping into a deep, almost masculine voice that managed to startle Sesshomaru into glancing back at her and away from his own sweat.

"Ridiculous," he repeated his earlier judgment and searched through his mind, trying to uncover what it was that he'd wanted to interrogate her about…

Tsukiyume turned her head slowly and spoke to her brother, "Shimofuri-sama," she intoned in her deep voice, "Tell Sesshomaru the hidden things that your nose reveals."

Shimofuri looked between his sister and the inuyoukai that he perceived as his enemy. Slowly he focused his attention on Sesshomaru who was staring back at him with a glare. "Your scent is changing. You are ill."

"Jaken," Sesshomaru called and the toad sat up expectantly. "We are leaving."

Tsukiyume moved with a suddenness that startled everyone in the room. She reached out with one hand and grasped Sesshomaru's armor, pulling on the cold metal. "You must stay here and listen if you wish to survive."

Sesshomaru swatted her hand away and lifted one lip in a snarl. "Do not touch me."

"You cannot venture out on your own," Tsukiyume snapped at him, "You must endure your illness with Shimofuri-sama and Lady Amagumori. If you do not, Sasugainu will kill you while you are weak and the goddess will kill your mate."

Sesshomaru hesitated, narrowing his eyes at her.

"Goddess?" Jaken asked, incredulously. "What nonsense is this?"

"Tsukiyume," Shimofuri called, frowning in confusion.

His sister turned slowly to look back at him. She fixed him with a powerful stare, lifting her chin slightly. "I am not Tsukiyume, Shimofuri-sama. I speak through her only."

Shimofuri's expression changed, slackening with awe. His demeanor changed. He was no longer the ruler of the Middle Lands in the Nanka as he stared at his sister in that moment. He had been stripped of his age and of his current title. He was Shishi-sama again, the puppy that was growing to fill the shoes of his proud, bizarre mother Taikokajin.

"Kokoro-sama," Shimofuri breathed.

Tsukiyume smiled at him briefly, acknowledging his use of the name, and then turned back to Sesshomaru with a stern, stoic look. "Lord Sesshomaru," the deep voice spoke through the hanyou girl with the proper titles of respect now, "You must rely on the strength of Shimofuri-sama to protect yourself, your mate, and your child the hanyou Saya."

Still Sesshomaru said nothing, merely stared. His ribs burned with each breath and the sweat on his forehead and on his scalp was accumulating, threatening to roll down his face again. The room was freezing; it was hard for him to restrain his shivering.

Jaken spoke for him at last. "Why should my lord rely on Lord Shimofuri? Lord Sesshomaru is perfectly able to handle himself! He needs no one else to…"

Tsukiyume interrupted him, "Because he is ill. The kitsune has given him a disease that will take time to run its course." She pinned Sesshomaru with her orange-brown eyes, "Before you are well again Lord Sesshomaru, the disease will turn you into a mortal."

Amagumori gasped then, making the first sound since she'd entered the room earlier. "Mortal? You mean—"

"Yes," Tsukiyume said. "Lord Sesshomaru will become completely human."

* * *

A/N: Sorry that was a little long, but it was just so much fun to write it and well, I had trouble cutting it off.

"_Why should I help him?" Shimofuri snarled, bitter. _

_Tsukiyume turned to face him directly. Her brown-orange eyes contracted with an unreadable, negative emotion that made Shimofuri suddenly cringe backward, ashamed. "Alone you will both fall. Together you can survive. Shimofuri-sama, you and the lord of the Western Lands are stubborn beasts. You must overcome your desire for vengeance. If you do you will rise out of this disaster powerful and with the renegade Sesshomaru indebted to you. He will be your ally."_


	10. Awakening

A/N: Okay I whined in _Innocence_ so I'll do the same thing here. I put a lot of work into these stories and I'll admit straight up I am a review whore, I love my reviews, it really encourages me to keep going. Plus, I find a review to be the most important part often of writing. If I'm doing something wrong, I need to know about it and if I'm not seeing it (and really, sometimes I don't!) you guys should tell me, which is exactly why reviews are important. I know these stories get nearly 100 hits pretty quick, within a day of when I update almost, but I'm lucky if I make 10 reviews. Usually for _Return _I make about 7-9 lately. I do apologize for being a review whore and I'm not saying I need everyone who reads to write a review every time they read--I know I don't do that necessarily, so I won't hold you guys to do it either. But if you have an opinion, or something was good or funny, any thought at all, you are free to share it. Even criticism, you can write in and say "I hate Ginrei." I will ask you why you hate her, but I'm not going to freak and block you for your opinion. Anyway...enough my my whining, eh?

And now we get to the part that I originally envisioned, the idea that propelled me to write this story. You may recognize it (the prologue). I have changed very little of it, just added onto it.

I'll tell you something that might not make it into the story directly. The "poison" that is making Sess sick is not really a poison; it's just that the people/demons of this time don't have our terminology and understanding of disease-causing agents. It is out of character then for Tsuki to say "Sess you've got a virus." They don't know what a virus is, thus they call it a poison. How could a virus transform Sess into a human? Well…I have the answer (and it's fascinating) but I think I won't explain it now, I'll see if I can fit it into the story.

Disclaimer: I do not own them, only my multitude of original characters.

Last Chapter: A lot happened. Tsukiyume regained her demonic powers and asked to speak with Sess. Rin and Ginrei talked and Ginrei told her that her scent had been changing and that it wasn't natural. Rin left to go back inside and saw Koeru/Jishin. There was a massive earthquake. Saya and Hanone were swallowed up by the ground and the river. Jishin told Ginrei that it was essentially Rin's fault and told her where Hanone was. Ginrei left to find her. Jishin saved Rin from the fiery palace and told her how things are gonna go down. Sess met with Tsukiyume. Kokoro, Tsuki's monk father, spoke through her to Sess and Shimo, partially explaining what's happening to Sess.

* * *

**Awakening**

They woke in the same moment in time, but miles apart. The first girl gasped and sprang up, her body quivering. Her skin was damp and chilled, her long hair was plastered to her flesh, a few strands were caught in her mouth. She pulled them free even as she continued to suck in the air hungrily, like a fish flopping inside the net of the fisherman.

The wind blew over her body, making her hold herself and squirm away from it. She realized slowly, with childlike innocence and astonishment, that she was naked. Leaves, twigs, and beach sand coated one side of her body. She brushed the debris free with clawed fingers.

Her nose told her a story of trees, and of the salty sea…her ears brought the sound of its waves crashing up on the shore, she could feel its deep, earthly rumble in her thighs where they touched the ground. She had never seen the sea before, only heard stories of it from her mother.

She glanced upward and saw the pine trees rising above her head, high into the starry nighttime sky. They rustled as the wind passed through them. Somewhere overhead bats whizzed by, squeaking with their sonar voices.

Slowly, she pushed herself upright and began walking unsteadily. Her legs were rail-thin and they wobbled underneath her as if she was learning how to walk all over again. There was a layer of beach sand beneath the decaying leaves of this forest. The ocean was close by, somewhere to her right through the blackness. The sand slipped away from her toes and the tiny girl paused to glance down at it curiously. Beach sand was a new phenomenon for her.

There was a line of rocks ahead, and tree stumps. The forest thinned out. She toddled forward, stumbling several times but picking herself up again without pause. There was a smell from up ahead: fire and wood smoke and food. She became convinced that her mother was ahead, waiting beside the fire. Her sister must be somewhere nearby as well, she could remember running with her under the sun, laughing…

She gave herself no time to consider how she had mysteriously passed from that happy, normal memory to this strange forest in the dark. There was nothing between those memories and her current reality. It was instantaneous. One moment she had been racing with her sister, competing with her as always. Grass and pollen scents filling her nose, the warm sun on her robes, the sound of Ginrei's voice calling for her.

And then she'd awoken in the beach sand, beneath the trees and the stars.

She reached the end of the forest and stopped short, gasping in shock. The forest ended in a sheer drop of at least ten feet. Yet, directly below, firelight flickered from the stones. The girl could see the firelight; smell the food and the smoke. She spotted a female figure sitting near the campfire. The firelight illuminated the woman's hair just enough that it revealed the color as being dark, a deep black…for a moment she opened her mouth, preparing to shout out to the woman on the desperate, wild thought that this was her mother—but even through the food and smoke smells, she could pick out the woman's scent. It wasn't her mother. Her eyes watered and she coughed, pulling back from the rising column of smoke.

The cough alerted the woman by the fire and she called out, "Who's there?"

The voice was older, raspier than the girl's mother. The girl hesitated. She had met very few strangers in her short lifetime; she wasn't sure how to react.

"Who's there?" the woman called again, a little less loudly now.

The girl smelled the fish from the fire and felt the chill of the wind rising from the salty sea. She choked on the strength of the smoke and abruptly felt fear swarm over her. It wasn't an emotion she was accustomed to. The tears came immediately after. She sank to her knees and wrapped her arms around them and started to cry loudly.

Voices echoed from below. "Do you hear that?"

"It sounds like a child…"

"Hello! Hello out there!" these were men's voices now, loud and strong, echoing from the rocks. The girl had even less of an idea of how to respond to them. Yet at the same time, she hadn't the slightest idea how she was going to get down to the beach from the cliff. The idea of the food kept her from running as the voices continued to call out, searching for her.

The ground vibrated a few times beneath her as footsteps approached. The girl scurried behind a boulder, perilously close to the edge of the cliff. She sniffled and ducked low, hoping that the man that had come running after her wouldn't find her…

He did.

For years afterwards the people of the tiny fishing village Kagainsen would recall with awe the story of the spirit child they found in the forest on the beach. A pale child with hair as white as freshly fallen snow and a purple crescent moon in the center of her forehead.

Her name was Saya and she was only four years old.

* * *

Hanone woke in a very different place. The room was dimly lit from one corner. Orange light flickered over the walls.

Her initial reaction was one of fear and self-defense. Her little heart pounded and Hanone lashed out in a wide, flailing circle around herself. She sat up and hugged her knees close to her body. Her clothing was rough like sandpaper on one side and damp on the other, making her shiver and pull at it irritably.

"Ah, pretty one. You are awake," a voice spoke up from the darker half of the room. Hanone lifted her head and stared at it with wide eyes the color of silver, the same shade as her mother's.

A short, small woman walked out of the dark. Her hair was long, flowing over her shoulders in a bright pink color. Hanone gaped at her silently, watching the woman approach for quite some time before she whimpered and began backing away on all fours like a trapped puppy.

"Oh sweetie, don't be afraid." The pink-haired woman dropped to her knees and held her arms open.

As Hanone watched, the pink-haired woman's body changed, wavering before her young eyes. The pink hair lost its bright color, leeching into a white-silver. Her eyes lost the brown inside them, as if someone had poked a hole into the irises and let all of the ink out. The color that was left inside was silver. Even the strange woman's cheeks sprouted the single white stripes.

It was her mother's image, but Hanone was not a foolish child. The woman did not have her mother's scent and scent was a stronger force to Hanone, overpowering what her eyes told her. Having her mother before her with her arms open, empty, and waiting, was a compelling image though and Hanone began to sob, mumbling under her breath, mewling for her mother.

"I'm here, pretty one," Hanone's Not-Mother answered, shuffling closer to her.

Hanone fought, kicking and clawing, but her movement was uncoordinated and feeble. As the strange woman with no scent drew closer, Hanone curled up tightly into a ball, covering her head and closing her eyes. The woman scooped Hanone up into her arms and held her close. Out of a desire not to fall, Hanone held onto the scentless woman and buried her face in her robes.

After a few minutes, and a great deal of walking and jostling, the strange woman knelt again and released Hanone. The tiny girl stumbled backward, tucking her legs up into her chest and wrapping her arms around her legs. She peeked through one eye at the room when she heard voices erupt around her, talking about her.

The scentless woman was sitting nearby, still identical outwardly to Hanone's mother. A man moved in the distance, Hanone could smell and hear him though she couldn't see him clearly. Otherwise the room appeared to be empty.

"Your daughter isn't here yet?" the scentless woman asked.

"No," the inuyoukai man replied. He was pacing, just out of Hanone's limited view.

"Your messenger would've reached her this afternoon? It was a kitsune, was it not?" the woman asked.

"Yes, but Soeki is willful. It's possible that she won't come at all."

The woman spoke with anger then, "That is not acceptable."

"No, but it hardly matters, right? The whelp's mother is coming isn't she? She'll be here probably before dawn I'd think."

"She is going to become your daughter, Sasugainu," the scentless woman scolded. "Come and meet her."

Footsteps thumped over the floor and Hanone curled more tightly into herself, whimpering. She smelled a male musk drawing close. Fear raced through her and her tiny hands curled into fists.

"Hello," the male voice greeted her and a moment later Hanone felt his touch on her head.

She reacted on instinct, lashing out with both hands and trying to bite him. For the first time, as the man drew away his hand and cradled it in shock, she got a good look at him. The male by the name of Sasugainu was tall and lithe like _father_ was, he also had white hair. But unlike _father_ or her mother, Sasugainu had green eyes, a color that Hanone had never seen before.

"I hope the bitch that's coming isn't inclined to bite like this whelp," he whined. "Where is Soeki?" He looked around the room as if expecting his daughter to materialize there instantly at his whim.

Hanone made little chewing motions with her mouth, gumming and tonguing the taste that Sasugainu's hand had left in her mouth when she had very briefly bitten him. She watched as he flicked at the small pinpricks where her teeth and nicked him, drawing out tiny beads of blood. Hanone could taste and through that sense, _smell_ him as well. It was a deep sense, a sort of sixth sense. With it she could analyze a scent or taste several times over what just her tongue or her nose could do. When she grew up this sense, which was fueled by a small organ in the roof of her mouth that would one day be called the Jacobson's organ, or vomeronasal organ, would have sexual purposes. It was with the vomeronasal organ that Ginrei and Sesshomaru were influenced with one another's pheromones. One day it would also dictate Hanone's sexual attractions, but in the current time she used it instinctually when she noticed that she and Sasugainu were the same species.

The taste that Sasugainu had left in her mouth revealed to her that they were distantly related. Hanone was not old enough to put any meaning on the knowledge, or to guess to what degree they were related. For now it served her as an instinctual guess as to whether or not Sasugainu would have an interest in protecting her or harming her. Was she competition, a future mate, or a family member to him? Hanone was far too young and inexperienced to know _why_ she analyzed him as she did, or why discovering the distant genetic relation gave her some measure of comfort, but like an infant shoving everything in its mouth to learn about the world, Hanone did it because it was instinctual, part of understanding and learning about her surroundings.

Although his relation to her offered Hanone some peace of mind, it was thin. The woman without a scent disturbed her and Sasugainu's relation to her was through _father _or _Lord-Sesshomaru._ Hanone had little faith in _father._ Her hopes rested entirely with _mother, Sister,_ and somewhat with Teacher Rin.

Sasugainu had no connections to those people at all.

"We can't frighten her," the scentless woman was saying. "We should leave her with a human. A human won't scare her I'm sure. Send in a maid with some food until someone comes to take care of her."

"In my bedchambers?" Sasugainu demanded, almost huffing.

"You don't even need to sleep," the scentless woman snapped. "Little Hanone does. You are her blood-relative. Your scent will comfort her."

"Of course," Sasugainu relented. "I will summon the maid."

The scentless woman nodded and, with a last glance at Hanone, who stared back at her wide-eyed and gaping, vanished.

Sasugainu paused when he'd reached the door and turned to look back at the cowering Hanone. He grunted, "I hope you're worth all this trouble, whelp."

* * *

After hearing Tsukiyume, or Kokoro the monk, whoever it was that spoke through the miserable hanyou girl, Sesshomaru and Jaken left to return to the room they had been given, following Lady Amagumori. As the inuyoukai woman stopped and opened the door to their room, Sesshomaru made a conscious decision to ignore her. He stepped past her, continuing down the hallway.

"Lord Sesshomaru?" Amagumori called concernedly from behind him. She hurried after Sesshomaru and Jaken, leaving the door wide open to the bedchamber that had been prepared for her and Shimofuri's guests. "Lord Sesshomaru! Please, stay with us! You are not well."

Sesshomaru didn't slow his pace. His thigh bones burned and stung and every step jarred them, sending ripples of pain flowing through the rest of his body. To Amagumori he said, "Ridiculous." (A/N: It seems to me that's one of his favorite one-liners.)

"Please!" she yelled and with a burst of speed she pushed past the toddling Jaken and slid through the narrow space between the wall and Sesshomaru's wide, proud shoulders. She fell to her knees before Sesshomaru and grasped his hands in her own. "Please—if you leave you'll die! My father is despicable. If he can poison the great Lord Sesshomaru and use the lord's own pride to kill him, what hope do I have to survive his plot?"

Sesshomaru's eyes narrowed, the twin spots of gold sparked with determination and pain. "I require no one's aid. Step aside," he ordered, freeing one hand and lifting it up before her face, pushing his claws, which had begun to glow green, close to her nose.

"You are ill! Please, stay under my husband's protection."

Jaken peeked out between Sesshomaru's legs, trembling. "My lord, please consider her words!"

Sesshomaru turned his face upward, away from both the toad and the inuyoukai woman. He was not foolish enough to deny to himself the truth: Tsukiyume was right. He wasn't dying, but things were changing rapidly inside his body. Sesshomaru was hundreds of years old and throughout that time he had learned the habits and abilities of his physical existence. There were very few things that he wasn't able to predict—his sex drive being one of them—hunger, the occasional need for sleep, thirst, warmth, and disease, all of these things he could predict. After a long battle he would require sleep and a good meal to prevent his body from weakening. During the wintertime he tolerated the cold up to a certain temperature before he would begin losing body heat and he would need to retreat into hibernation or into shelter—shelter was far preferable.

The kitsune girl's thorn-poison had rendered the hundreds of years of experience Sesshomaru had into worthless garbage. He had been hungry unexpectedly, he was suffering a strange ailment that made him cold and weak and it played with his mind, and while he put on a brave front for Amagumori, Shimofuri, and Tsukiyume, he was beginning to feel the need for sleep too. If he had been merely dying those drives would stop. A dying creature doesn't think about food unless it's starving to death. Dying, as far as Sesshomaru understood it, was a numbing process. The loss of the senses, the loss of the drive to fight and survive. Sesshomaru suffered those, but other drives had changed, increasing, like hunger and sleep, as well as his internal temperature.

He was not dying, but he was changing.

But his physical changing was only one thing for him to worry about. Hearing Tsukiyume—or Kokoro the monk or whoever—mention Rin and Saya had set a fire under Sesshomaru that the illness couldn't dull. If he was facing an attack on all sides, against himself and against his family, Sesshomaru had no time to worry about himself. He was not one-hundred percent, but he was still powerful and strong. He could fight and protect Rin, Ginrei, and his daughters.

"Get out of my way," he snapped, allowing anger to break out over his face. He reached out and grasped Amagumori by the throat with his green-glowing fingers. The inuyoukai woman gaped at him, her face transformed by terror. She released her feeble hold on him and clutched at his hand on her neck instead.

Sesshomaru lifted her up off the ground, nearly grunting with the effort and pain that it took him to do it. He flung Amagumori into the papered screen walls to their right. Her body crashed through, splintering wood and ripping apart paper. A few maids screeched in fear and skittered away on the other side of the flimsy wall. Amagumori coughed and held her neck on the other side with shaking fingers. She peered at Sesshomaru through shimmering, teary eyes.

Stolid, uncaring, Sesshomaru walked onward, leaving her behind.

* * *

In Tsukiyume's bedchambers, Shimofuri and his sister were sitting together quietly in a thick, heavy silence that had lasted since Sesshomaru, Jaken, and Amagumori had left.

Finally, Tsukiyume closed her eyes and sighed heavily. "Shimofuri-sama," she spoke in the deep voice still, telling the young demon lord that Kokoro still inhabited her foremost. "You must go after Sesshomaru. He cannot accept his oncoming weakness."

She wasn't looking at him, but Shimofuri was staring with angry, slitted eyes at his possessed half-sister. "He has never been weak before. He'll never accept it and he will never willingly stay here under anyone else's protection. If I go after him he'll try to kill me."

"Trail him," Tsukiyume said. "Follow him at a distance. He cannot scent you any longer. He is losing his powers. It won't be long before he will no longer be able to travel. He will be unable to fight you, as weak as a pup."

"Why should I help him?" Shimofuri snarled, bitter.

Tsukiyume turned to face him directly. Her brown-orange eyes contracted with an unreadable, negative emotion that made Shimofuri suddenly cringe backward, ashamed. "Alone you will both fall. Together you can survive. Shimofuri-sama, you and the lord of the Western Lands are stubborn beasts. You must overcome your desire for vengeance. If you do you will rise out of this disaster powerful and with the renegade Sesshomaru indebted to you. He will be your ally."

Uncertainly, Shimofuri shook his head. "He will take my sister from me. Lord Sesshomaru doesn't make allies, he only conquers."

Tsukiyume's ears flattened against the top of her head, "You are wrong. He will respect you, he will reward you. Shimofuri-sama will rise out of this time as the leader of his own clan. The balance of power will be restored."

Shimofuri frowned. "The leader of my own clan? The balance of power?"

His sister's eyes dipped closed, her shoulders fell slack. A long time passed before she opened them again and looked at her brother with a bewildered expression. "What?"

With a growl, Shimofuri rose to his feet. "Nothing, Tsuki. Sleep. I will return to you soon." As he walked toward the door it slid open and Amagumori was knelt there, panting and hysterical.

"Amagumori?" Shimofuri asked. "What is it?"

"Lord Sesshomaru attacked me," she panted. "He left. I begged him not to." The tears began rushing down her plump cheeks, "If my father can kill _him_ with a poison, what chance do _I _have?"

"Watch over my sister," Shimofuri ordered, sighing. "I'll go after him. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Before Amagumori could say anything else her husband-cousin had vanished, hurrying out of the room.

In the bed, cringing with pain, Tsukiyume's ears were quivering and her lips trembled in a frown. "Sesshomaru is going to kill him…"

Amagumori dissolved into sobs, covering her face. "I know!"

* * *

The moment that Rin awoke, she knew she had either lost her mind, or she had died.

The world was dark and dull around her. She was in an open space. The trees were at a great distance away, shrouded by thick, smoky mist. The air that she breathed in was cloudy, the same shade of gray as the mists. At first she covered her nose, certain that the substance would choke her or scald her throat like smoke, but with each breath she smelled nothing harsh and acrid. The air was thick and moist, but Rin actually found it soothing, almost to the point of being draining.

She crawled over the damp earth. Mud and grass soon coated her fingers and palms. Her clothing was tattered and torn and muddied. She was moving uphill, pawing for purchase on the slick ground, searching through the fog with her eyes for any sign of other beings, living or otherwise.

She stopped when something moved inside her. Rin sat up, trying to balance on the balls of her feet. Her belly rippled, bubbling. She laid her hands over it, alarmed and awed at the same time. The movement caused very little discomfort. Since she had passed out, lying on the grass outside of the burning, empty Jouka palace, Rin realized that her pregnancy had visibly advanced. She felt heavier, bloated, and famished.

It was like a parasite, not a child. It was growing too fast. Why wasn't she feeling ill?

_I must be dead…_

The idea was oddly comforting and painful at once. In Death there would be no further suffering, but there would also be no _living._ How could she bring life to the creature inside her if she was dead? And how could she save Saya…?

The image of her daughter made Rin gnash her teeth and begin crawling once more, ignoring the strange flickering movement in her womb.

A shape at last appeared out of the mists, immediately in front of Rin. She sat up, startled by the shape but recognizing it at once. It was Koeru, or Jishin, whichever name described the goddess.

"Did you think that you had gotten away, Lady Rin?" the goddess asked, laughing. In the gray world, Koeru-Jishin's hair had dulled into a deep gray as well, like a tired old woman's. And yet the goddess's eyes, which were normally an earthy brown, had become as fiery as her hair had once been, glowing red like hot coals.

Rin sucked hard on the thick, moist air. "What is this place?"

"You should recognize it. You've been here several times before, but on those occasions you stumbled to this place on your own as you lay dying."

_The spirit realm,_ Rin thought, blinking as she glanced around her again. _Am I really dead?_

Jishin laughed at her. "No, you're not. I have brought you here to watch over you. You should thank me because here you don't suffer."

"Suffer?" Rin asked, confused. She lifted her hands, gazing at the wet, sloppy mud on them. It should've left her cold, but Rin felt nothing.

"Your body is lying safely, sleeping in the Northern Lands. Lord Sesshomaru's son will be born there." The goddess smirked and crouched to lean closer to Rin, taunting her. "And his father will never even know of it. Sesshomaru will never see the child."

Rin was numb, staring back at the goddess, lost in questions, swimming in them. _Sesshomaru…_

"Enjoy your time here. Your soul can wander for eternity, Lady Rin. Perhaps you will even meet someone you knew in life!" Jishin bowed and began to step back, fading into the mists.

Panic rushed through Rin. She hobbled onto her feet, rushing after the fading goddess. "No! Please, wait!" Her feet tangled on themselves and she collapsed, hitting the earth hard. It squelched beneath her, sickeningly.

As Rin tried to catch her breath, the child kicked, revealing its liveliness. An idea came to Rin as she felt the baby moving. _The child was my pact with Koeru…_Jishin kept her prisoner through the child. If she could force it out of her body, if she could induce a miscarriage, she could free herself from Jishin's control and perhaps waken in the real world again.

With new energy and passion, Rin hauled her body up and, with one arm wrapped around her slightly bloated belly, she began to rush toward the trees shrouded in their coats of mist. The air was hard to breathe and, though she supposed she shouldn't have needed to breathe at all, she soon found herself winded. Tall grass tickled her legs soon and when she fell into it Rin saw that it was washed out into a gray color too. It was cold, chilled like the dirt and the mud and the dew, as if there was no sun in this gray world at all.

Rin hurdled through the mists, out of the clearing at last and into the thick, shrouded forest. She fell. Pine needles brushed her face, scratching lightly against her skin. Rin patted her palms over the needles on the ground. The scent of the tree was rich and earthy, though the distinctive smell of the pine needles themselves was lost. A stick met with her hands. It was coated in lichen, gray-blue like Lord Shimofuri's eyes. Rin brought the stick close to her face and shivered, her shoulders heaved as she worked to breathe the thick, misty air. She began to break the smaller, twiggy branches off it, discarding them. Could she force the abomination out of her womb with the branch? The pain would be excruciating, but perhaps it would waken her…

Rin swallowed thickly and whimpered, tossing away the branch, abandoning it. Despairing, she wrapped her arms around herself, rocking on her knees as she struggled to think and calm herself. _I won't give up yet._ She imagined Saya and Sesshomaru and began to crawl forward. _I'm going to get out of here…I'm going to escape…_

"_Rin…"_

The voice startled Rin. She searched around her through the mists. "Who's there?"

A shape appeared from the underbrush several feet ahead of her. The outline was difficult, indistinct. Rin paused, uncertain of this latest visitor. It was a man, probably human. He was wearing peasant pants, she could tell from the outline of the short, wide garments. He wore a sunhat though there was no sun to block. He could have been any man knelt and stooped over in the rice paddies in the spring planting season, but something inside Rin knew that he was _not_ a random spirit. _He knows my name…_

"_That is because I am the one that named you," _the spirit answered in a soft, somber male's voice.

Rin knew, suddenly and terrifyingly, just who he was. She covered her mouth, unbelievingly, strangling her words as they passed her lips. "_Father?_"

A different voice answered: _"Yes."_ Beside the shape of the human man in his peasant pants, Rin saw another figure emerge, shorter and leaner, also dressed in a peasant pants and a sunhat. But this was not a male figure, Rin made out the curve or breasts and hips. The voice was one that she had carried with her through deep, sad dreams from her childhood.

"_Mamma,"_ she whimpered, reduced to the informal, childish terms of her girlhood.

"_We've come to guide you,"_ the figure of her father told her. He began to walk forward through the gray, thick air. His face started to come clear, his shape. His dark honeyed skin, his deep black hair…

Rin lowered her head, pressing it to the earthy smell of the leaf litter. She was panting, fighting to breathe. "I can't go with you! I'm not dead!" _I have to save my daughter and Lord Sesshomaru…_

Her mother answered her, also beginning to walk forward, _"We know, Daughter. We are here only to help you leave this place. It is your Fate. You cannot resist it."_

_My Fate?_ Rin thought, peering up at the gray shape of her father's nearing spirit. "What do you mean it is my fate?"

Her father was beside her now. Rin could see the details of his body, little things that she only faintly remembered from her childhood. The hair on her father's legs, the corded muscles on his arms. The gentleness in his eyes as he knelt and stared down at her. The way his hands were rough on her hair because his calluses caught and pulled on the individual strands. He spoke to her, quietly. _"You have entered this realm many, many times, but always you have been sent back. This time is no different. You were brought here and trapped by the goddess Jishin. She was allowed to bring you here only because it furthered your Fate."_

Rin shook her head and began, to her shame, to cry. Her shoulders shook. "I don't understand! Is it my fate to walk this realm forever now?" She hauled herself up from the ground weakly and started to walk with her back turned to her mother and father. "I can't go with you—I have to save Saya…"

Rin's mother spoke behind her in a deep, sad voice. _"Do not worry about her. You must come with us, Daughter. We will lead you out of this realm and back to the world of the living."_

"You will lead me out of here?" Rin asked, repeating the words back carefully, as if the spirits could be hard of hearing when in reality they were so in tune with her that they could read her thoughts, as they'd already demonstrated. She had never spoken to spirits for a prolonged period of time. She had heard and read legends and tales of vengeful spirits before. Would her own parents, as spirits, try to trick her? Was her only choice really to follow them?

"_You must come with us,"_ her father murmured behind her.

The child, the abomination, swam inside her belly, kicking as if he protested her latest decision. Her belly was still mostly flat, and yet the child moved as if she were six months pregnant with an obvious bloated abdomen to prove it. Rin moved one hand over her womb and then curled her hand into a fist.

"I'll come with you."

* * *

Two hours before dawn Sasugainu's inuyoukai guards—lowborn mongrels, wolf-dog crossbreeds, and hanyou—hauled a dirty, muddied inuyoukai woman up to his study. At first Sasugainu was alarmed, but when he took in her scent and saw the young bitch lift her eyes up to glare at him, he recognized her at once. A grin spread over his lips. "Welcome! Lady Ginrei was it…?"

The inuyoukai woman's shoulders rose and fell rapidly. Her silvered hair, one shade darker than Sasugainu's own, was smudged with dirt, mud, and debris. "Where's my daughter?" she growled. "I can smell her—tell me where she is!"

"You're daughter is safe here in this palace. She is waiting for you." Sasugainu shifted in his spot and looked to where his monkey-youkai scribe was fidgeting and rereading the last passage that he'd written before Ginrei had appeared. Sasugainu grunted, "Monkey, wait here for my return."

The scribe mumbled and bowed and then, self-consciously, began picking through his gray fur, looking for ticks and lice.

Sasugainu left him, walking past where Ginrei was on her hands and knees, caught between her animal true-form and her bipedal, human-like form. "Follow me," he called to her, gently.

When Ginrei moved abruptly, wheeling around and lunging for Sasugainu, the inuyoukai guards rushed after her, grabbing with their clothes. Ginrei's already messy robes tore, the fabric screaming against the guards' claws. Sasugainu turned and grappled with Ginrei, snatching up her flailing arms—but not before she had landed a blow with her claws. The scent of Sasugainu's blood entered the air. As Ginrei snarled up at him, her fine, delicate features distorted by an animalistic, maternal rage, Sasugainu saw her nostrils flare and her eyes dilate.

"I remember you," she breathed, flashing her canines at him.

On a night more than five years prior, Ginrei's family had been slaughtered, when her clan, the Nishiyori clan had fallen for good, driven into extinction by a vicious civil war in the Middle Lands. Except for a few scattered half-breeds and bastards—and Ginrei herself—there were no survivors. On that night Ginrei had been picked out of all her female kin to be Sesshomaru's bride, and she had seen the leaders of army that destroyed the Nishiyori clan: Shimofuri of the Nanka and Sasugainu of the Hokubo.

Both Sasugainu and Ginrei remembered the event. Staring down at her, Sasugainu saw Ginrei's eyes begin to glow red around the edges. When she spoke again the words were garbled by her enlarging fangs and a lengthening jaw.

"You killed my family."

Sasugainu was ready with a quick retort to steal the wind from Ginrei's sails, to deflate her rage. "What I did was only possible with _your husband's_ help, and that is why you are still alive, is it not? If you were truly honorable, you would have joined your family in paradise."

Ginrei's transformation halted abruptly. She blinked, her face rippled with anguish and doubt. She pulled away from Sasugainu but found that his hold was firm and unyielding. She shook her head. "He prevented me from following them," she whimpered and closed her eyes. "And my child…"

"Yes, your child," Sasugainu said, releasing Ginrei's wrists. "It was only natural for you to cling to her. I have kept her safe, Lady Ginrei. I have no desire to harm you or your child. My vendetta was against your husband—and I believe that you have every reason to _work with me against him."_

Ginrei's knees were shaking. She had lowered her head, letting her silvered hair hide her features. "Please, take me to my daughter."

"Of course." Sasugainu lead the way, holding his head up high and keeping his mind and his ears tuned on Ginrei's tread behind him. After rounding a few corners and ascending a flight of stairs, Sasugainu stood before his bed chambers and slid the door open, stepped back as Ginrei moved past him into the room.

A human servant was there with Ginrei's whelp. The maid had a platter of finely chopped raw meat. Hanone was cowering in the corner, though she had lifted her head and was alert, looking between the maid and Ginrei. Her face lit up, her little mouth opened in a broad smile. "Mamma!"

Ginrei rushed forward, ignoring the human maid that scrambled out of the way. She scooped Hanone up into her arms, cuddling the pup close to her and stroking her hair. "Hanone, Hanone," she chanted her daughter's name. "I've found you, I've found you…"

Sasugainu turned and flicked his hand at the inuyoukai guards that had trailed him and Ginrei. "Leave us," he ordered. One look at the human servant sent her running out of the room.

Alone, Sasugainu slid the door shut and advanced on Ginrei slowly, clearing his throat. "Lady Ginrei," he addressed her with respect but it failed to draw Ginrei's attention away from her sobbing whelp. "As you can see I have left your daughter unharmed. As I have said, I have no desire to harm you. In fact, my lady, I seek an alliance with you."

Ginrei showed no sign that she could hear him at all. Her attention was entirely focused on Hanone. She was combing her daughter's white hair with her dirty claws, straightening it out, and tracing the white stripes over Hanone's face. Although Hanone was weaned, a fact that Sasugainu had picked out already by scenting the mother and daughter, she picked at Ginrei's robes, trying to nurse out of a desire for comfort. Ginrei loosened her robe and tucked her daughter inside, covering her up and holding the girl close to her skin.

Sasugainu frowned, knowing that Ginrei wouldn't see the expression. "I seek an alliance with you, my lady—against your husband and all that remains of his power. I will free the Western Lands of Sesshomaru's tyranny. And—"

Below him, rocking back and forth where she held her daughter, Ginrei made a snorting sound. "You would _free_ Lord Sesshomaru's lands? But it would only be trading one tyrant for another."

Sasugainu bit his lips, restraining a sigh. He sat down where he was, putting himself on the same level with Ginrei. "No, my lady. Please, you do not understand. I have done all that I have done," he stopped, sighing with genuine upset then, unable to hold the feeling back, "And much of it I regret now, in the hopes that I may truly destroy your husband's ruthless grip on power. He defies the inuyoukai clans in every way. Especially in the way that he denied you, my lady, the right to be with your family in paradise, the way that he stole your honor. Without his help Nishiyori would still be here, but he would rule in place of my nephew, Shimofuri. But none of the clans would have been completely destroyed. It is a fact of the campaign that I regret, but by tradition Nishiyori and his clan had to die for their insolence."

"I…" Ginrei's voice wavered, weak and small, "I have…accepted my past. Please, do not speak of it."

"Regardless of that then," Sasugainu began, speaking hurriedly. "I urge you to consider an alliance with me for your own sake. With Lord Sesshomaru dead the Western Lands will not fall into my hands as you believe. They were once as divided and shared as the Middle Lands. I will distribute the Western Lands into provinces and give each a ruling clan. If you join me, my lady, I will give _you_ one of these provinces."

"My husband has already promised me the Isei province in your Middle Lands," Ginrei murmured.

"But Lord Sesshomaru may not keep his promise to you, Lady Ginrei. I would. Tell me, why has your husband not yet given you the Isei as your own? You have loyally given him a child…"

"The Isei will become mine when I have a son," Ginrei said, staring at the platter of meat that had been brought in. Her mind was spinning, lost in Sasugainu's words, trying to discern his plans underneath his smart, tempting words.

"But that can never happen now," Sasugainu growled out in an almost mocking voice. "I have heard that Lady Rin has found a way to defy nature and conceive Lord Sesshomaru's pure son! Everyone knows of Sesshomaru's powerful love for that little mortal bitch. If she gives him a pureblooded son—what will Sesshomaru do with you? You will be worthless to him."

Ginrei had stopped rocking. She sat still, with her spine taut, stiff as steel. Hanone had fallen asleep with her warm, wet lips around one of her nipples, but Ginrei could no longer feel the comforting sensation of her daughter's miniscule suckling motions. She recalled vividly the impossible scent on Rin, the way that the mortal woman had glowed, the wariness of her answers when Ginrei had questioned her.

What had the earth goddess said? The earthquake was a punishment for Rin who had defied the laws of nature itself…

"There was an earthquake," Ginrei said. "And Hanone was brought here by it. By that goddess…"

Sasugainu was silent, his face blank, his eyes narrowed with concentration.

"It isn't a coincidence." Ginrei realized, speaking slowly. "You sent the goddess; you caused the earthquake to bring Hanone here—to get _me._"

"I will not lie to you, my lady," Sasugainu intoned, solemnly. "I am in league with that goddess. She came to me saying that Lady Rin had defied the laws of nature, that there is an imbalance of power that must be stabilized. I agreed to work with her to bring about that balance once more." His voice grew higher, more insistent. "If you work with me, Lady Ginrei, I will make you the head of your own clan. You can take whatever surname you wish. My only stipulation is that you help me as well."

"What would you ask of me?" Ginrei whispered.

"I'm afraid it is much the same that your current husband has asked, but I will better his offer. Here in the Middle Lands I am at a great disadvantage. My wife has died and left me with two daughters. I have no proper heir, just as Sesshomaru has no son. If you accept my offer, Lady Ginrei, I will give you the land the moment I have it. I will have your marriage to Lord Sesshomaru annulled and I will take you as my wife. You would be my _only_ partner. At a later date, after this mess has been finished, I will come to stay with you and we will make my son. After that time you will be free to do as you wish with your lands and designate your own heirs, male or female." Sasugainu sighed, frowning down at his hands. "I do apologize, Lady Ginrei. I understand it is a steep price for me to ask, but in return for your aid, I will support you, provide troops for you if you wish…"

"And what if I do not give you a son? What if the child is another girl?" Ginrei's voice was tight, quiet and constrained.

"The she will be yours."

Ginrei drew in a slow breath and held it. "And what if I should refuse you? What's to stop me from turning away and going back to my husband?"

Sasugainu was quiet for a moment before he gave a short, soft chuckle. "Well, nothing my lady. I would be greatly disappointed, but I wouldn't try to stop you. But I'm afraid that you will soon not have a husband to return to."

"I see," Ginrei murmured, fingering a messy strand of her daughter's white hair. It was a shade that was lighter than her own, a trait that had been passed onto Hanone by Sesshomaru, her father. Ginrei's face hardened, her lips turned into a harsh frown for a moment and then she blanked her expression and sat stiffly upright.

"I accept your offer, my lord…" she blinked as she realized that she wasn't sure that she knew his name.

"Perfect, Lady Ginrei!" Sasugainu shifted with excitement and energy. "I will call in my scribe and we will work out the details now—"

"Not tonight," Ginrei sighed, letting the fatigue slip easily into her voice. "It has been a very tiring time for me. In the morning when I am properly dressed and when I can think clearly we will sit and draw up the plans."

There was a short pause and through it Ginrei could sense Sasugainu's impatience and unhappiness at her decision. He was bristling, trying to come up with a good way to force her into negotiations at that very moment. At last he relented. "Very well. Have a wonderful night, my lady. I will be forever indebted to you."

He bowed, giving her another flowery goodbye, some lines from a poem, and then vanished, leaving her alone inside his bedchambers. Ginrei closed her eyes, sighing heavily. The night was already almost over but Sasugainu come for her as quickly as he could. There was little time to lose…

* * *

A/N: Sorry I don't have a preview this time. I slowed my writing on this one because I took a break to write more chapters of my third novel-thinger. Until next time then...


	11. Mr Yamaiko

A/N: I have had a large number (well a couple anyway) of reviewers ask for Inuyasha and Kagome's family to enter this story. I wasn't sure for a while whether I wanted to do that or not, but I've decided that I will. You will see IY and company make an entrance soon.

The next chapter after this one is a bit intense-ish I think. At least in one part. I'll be excited to post it!

Disclaimer: I do not own them.

Last Chapter: Saya awoke on a beach. Hanone woke in Sasugainu's castle currently in the Itou. Ginrei went after her and found Sasugainu there, proposing a deal where her marriage to Sess would be annulled and she would marry him and give him a son in return for land yet again. Ginrei accepted. Tsuki/Kokoro convinced Shimo to go after Sess when he refused their hospitality and tried to run off.

**Mr. Yamaiko**

_Sasugainu sat awake in his study, alone and with the lights doused. Dawn was just beginning to peak through the papered screens of the windows. _

_A small but deep woman's voice came through the still, thick darkness. "We are the fisherman," she said, whispering. "We have cast the net wide and snared the fish inside. Sesshomaru, Rin, Ginrei, and Shimofuri. Now we pull on the strings and encircle the fish with the mesh. Things will begin to happen faster. Hanone is ours. Rin and her hanyou have vanished. Shimofuri will soon be condemned by his kinfolk and outcast. Ginrei will become your wife. And Sesshomaru grows weaker and weaker…"_

"_When will you kill him?" Sasugainu demanded of the darkness, breathlessly. _

_The voice laughed, "Soon enough. You must be patient my fisherman. Move too soon and the fish can swim away…"_

"_This fish could very well kill us," Sasugainu reminded her, glumly. _

"_Not for long." In the far corner, hidden in the dark, a pair of pink lips curled upwards into a delicate, conniving smile._

* * *

Ginrei ate the raw meat that had been left on the platter in Sasugainu's bedchamber. Once in a while she woke Hanone and fed her pre-chewed mouthfuls of it.

Dawn had come outside. Ginrei could feel the rising heat of the day just beyond the walls of the bedchamber. The window screens were bright with sunlight. Her mind was spinning, curling in on itself. She felt little emotion toward Sesshomaru and found that she had almost no desire to return to him. She didn't mind Rin, and although she felt some bitterness toward Saya because the faster-developing hanyou girl had outpaced and outshined Hanone, she wished them no ill will. Hanone would miss Saya and Rin if they never met again. But if Rin was really doomed because she had dabbled in black magic and broken the laws of nature…

On the other end of the spectrum was Sasugainu. Like Sesshomaru he only wanted to marry her because she could give him an heir. Ginrei didn't want to leave her known position to venture into an unknown one. Sesshomaru had Hanone's best interests in mind. He was harsh, but he was bound by _family_ to protect Hanone because she carried his blood, his genes.

Sasugainu had only a distant relation to Hanone. She would be nothing to him. At the very most Hanone could be a tool, a thing used in marriage alliances. At the worst she would be a threat to him and his heirs. Sasugainu could orchestrate Hanone's death. It wouldn't have been the first time that a wary dog killed another's pup to further his own. _Family_ outweighed all else. _Blood_ determined _family._

On top of that she knew that the goddess that had punished Rin and taken Hanone from her had done so to force Ginrei into coming to Sasugainu. It was a dishonest trick, a form of coercion. Yet Sasugainu had tried to sound reasonable and respectful. It was a believable act, but Ginrei wasn't prepared to give herself—and her child—to him on the basis of a believable _act._ Words whispered and lied; actions screamed and cried the truth. The truth she saw in Sasugainu was hidden in his actions. She doubted that he would've allowed her to leave as he'd claimed, if she'd said no. So she had said yes to buy time.

But if Sesshomaru really was doomed and Ginrei turned Sasugainu's offer back at him—she would lose everything. The same was true potentially if she turned her back on Sesshomaru and chose Sasugainu.

Perhaps there was a third path, a middle ground…

As if in response to her thoughts, Ginrei heard a voice shouting from down the hallway outside the bed chamber. She registered that the voice was oddly female, young and vivacious, yapping like a lapdog, but the observation didn't stop her from scooping Hanone up into her arms protectively. She woke her daughter and whispered to her. "Hold onto me, sweetie. Hold on _tight._"

The door was opened by maids kneeling at the edges of the door, doubled over as they bowed and touched their noses to the floor. Walking ahead of them was a small inuyoukai woman, barely grown to maturity. By scent Ginrei knew at once that this was Sasugainu's daughter—but she was also related to Ginrei. She was a close descendant of the Nishiyori family through her mother, Sasugainu's deceased wife.

Ginrei saw a glimpse of the youth's face just before she bowed. Sasugainu's daughter was gaping at her with a mixture of pity and anger. "So you're the one my bastard father wants to marry?"

Ginrei cleared her throat and answered calmly, "Yes. He did mention marriage to me."

"Yeah, after he took your pup and asked _me_ to come here and care for it!" she huffed and stomped into the room. Without preamble she sat in front of Ginrei and introduced herself. "My name's Soeki. My mother was Hokinsha—of the Nishiyori clan. You're Lord Sesshomaru's wife?"

"I am," Ginrei replied, still bowing.

Soeki scoffed with disgust and reached out to touch Ginrei's uncombed, dirtied hair. "My father didn't even issue you a maid. He didn't give you any hospitality at all, did he?" Her tone picked up, rushing as she went on, "You're of the Nishiyori clan too, I can smell it on you. It's like there's a curse on our clan."

It was bold and almost startling for Soeki to speak as if she were one of Nishiyori's daughters, rather than a child of Sasugainu's. Technically she was a direct descendant of the extinct clan, but in every proper way Soeki was only considered as belonging to her _father's_ clan. The heritage that her mother passed on meant nothing unless her father refused to claim her. So it was that Hanone could have been part of the Nishiyori clan through Ginrei, but because of Sesshomaru's influence she was part of Inutaisho's line instead. Even Ginrei's identity as part of the Nishiyori clan was diminished, if not destroyed by her marriage to Sesshomaru. A wife belonged to her _husband's clan,_ not her mother's or her father's clan.

Ginrei didn't raise her head out of her bow. She was thinking hard and needed to keep her face hidden from Sasugainu's bizarre, forward daughter. "Please, do not speak of it. It is in the past."

"For me it's not!" Soeki snapped. Her clawed hands folded into fists on her lap. "My father killed my mother. They said it was poison but it was a curse. My father hated the Nishiyori clan because they married him to Mother. He hated Mother because she could think for herself and she was smart—and because she refused to give him a son."

One of the maids spoke from the door, "My lady, Lord Sasugainu is surely on his way…"

"Come with me," Soeki hissed, desperate and hurried. She grabbed Ginrei's arm and tugged. "I'll tell you everything I know about my father's plan."

Ginrei resisted, shaking her head. "Where are you taking me?"

"I'm going to get you out of here. You're part of his plan too—just like Mother and my sister too. I'm not letting him get you too." Soeki pulled on Ginrei and this time Ginrei allowed herself to be dragged at a jog out of the room. Hanone held onto her around her waist, gripping hard with her arms and legs. The maids hurried behind them, their bare feet padding loudly over the hard floors.

* * *

At the border between the Middle and Western Lands, as the moon lowered, skimming through the night sky, Sesshomaru collapsed. He fell onto his shoulder, propping it against a tree. He slid down its rough bark, peeling some of it away. Flakes of it careened down, and sap flowed from some of the disturbed spots, rich and yellow-brown. Sesshomaru watched the sap ooze out of the tree's wounds, disturbed as he realized that the scent was diminished, almost gone.

Jaken panicked at his side, screeching his name and bowing. "My lord! My lord! Are you okay? _Please_ tell me you are okay!"

Sesshomaru glanced at the toad and found that the image had blurred and distorted. He saw multiple Jakens just offset from one another. They came together, swimmingly, when he blinked and focused with every ounce of concentration he could muster. His sense of smell had all but vanished; it was pleasing to note that his eyesight was still present although far from its usual level of perfection.

"Jaken," he found that his voice was thick and raspy, "Silence…" He stared at the toad for a long moment, needing to ask a different question, a specific service of his amphibious retainer. He wanted to ask Jaken if they were being followed or not, to prompt Jaken to watch over the road and their surroundings. Normally Sesshomaru was the supreme watcher. Nothing escaped his nose, his eyes, or his ears. Asking Jaken to act as his guardian, to be his eyes, ears, and nose was unthinkable to Sesshomaru. It revealed unprecedented weakness.

Pride came before even survival after all.

Sesshomaru slumped forward onto the ground, closing his eyes. Jaken screeched with alarm and dared to rush forward, grabbing his lord's shoulder and shaking him. Sesshomaru mustered the strength to bat the toad away but could not rouse himself.

The pain wracking his body was unlike any that he'd known before. It was deep inside him, tearing his bones apart seemingly at the seams. It was in his joints but also in the deeps of his very marrow. Although Sesshomaru could never understand the forces that were at work inside of him, a tiny force had mobilized against him, throughout his body. Certain parts of him fell first, crumbling, but others would follow.

Sleep crashed over him, a fitful, pained sleep. He came awake at long intervals and saw Jaken watching him, sometimes crying and other times picking at his nose or at the soil, eating bugs as if this rest were like any other break that they might've taken while Rin was in tow. Faintly Sesshomaru caught the way that the light changed as the sun rose and the daylight hours began inexorably.

When the sun had reached its zenith, Sesshomaru was able to open his eyes. His bones had continued their aching, but now another symptom had appeared: _hunger._ Sesshomaru could feel his guts rumbling and stirring. His stomach was hollow, uncomfortable, and acidic.

Jaken was nowhere to be seen.

Sesshomaru pushed himself upright and then, gritting his teeth and fighting to keep his face from registering the intense, deep ache that coursed through his bones as he put weight on them, he looked around. He had lost hours of travel time with his exhausted sleep. Broad leafed trees sprawled out around him in the forest, flickering as the wind above passed over them. the sunlight was cheery and golden, shining down from straight above him, marking the highpoint of the day. The road ahead curved sharply upward, curling over a rocky hill.

The thought of climbing it made Sesshomaru's knees weak. He leaned backward, putting his weight into the tree that had supported him before.

"Jaken?" Again his voice was raspy and weak.

"My lord!" The toad appeared, hopping away from the road and prostrating himself at Sesshomaru's feet. "You're finally awake! I have been keeping watch!"

Relief and gratitude swept through Sesshomaru, but he didn't dare express it. "That is not necessary. We must keep moving."

"My lord! Of course! But…I think there may be someone following us! And—uh—shouldn't we stop to go hunting?" Jaken stammered over the last part, embarrassed. The truth was that he could smell the reek of Sesshomaru's hunger from several feet away. "I've seen all sorts of hares darting around here…"

Sesshomaru considered resisting Jaken's suggestion, but the hollow burning in his stomach screamed against that foolishness. "Stay here and watch the road," he ordered Jaken, despising himself for the weakness.

"Yes my lord! Of course, my lord!" Jaken shouted, bowing several times over as Sesshomaru turned his back on the toad and began to walk calmly away.

After he had walked several hundred yards, Sesshomaru stopped. His shoulders slid forward, sagging with exhaustion. He closed his eyes and turned his thoughts inward, drawing on his internal energy, his power as an inuyoukai. It waited inside him, coiled in a tight ball. But when he tried to reach it, to use it to change into a different form, nothing happened.

Startled, Sesshomaru opened his eyes and stared around at the forest. A sort of shame flowed through him, an emotion he was completely unaccustomed to. He half-expected to find a teacher or a parent nearby, shaking their heads at him, judging him for his failure. The last time he had been unable to draw on his youkai energy to change form had been as a pup. It was as if his body were regressing, forgetting how far it had come.

Defiantly, Sesshomaru tried again. He closed his eyes and concentrated, reaching within. This time his sense of that internal power had diminished, as if becoming blurred through smoke. A rush of some emotion—was it _panic?—_sent cold tingles over his entire body. Without that power curled up inside him, fueling him, Sesshomaru would be _nothing._ Blind, deaf, and unable to smell properly, he was powerless.

A bird twittered above him. Sesshomaru reacted on impulse, flicking his arm to summon the green tendril of his whip. The power inside him stirred, responding sluggishly. When Sesshomaru pulled back his arm and let the whip fly in the direction that he'd heard the bird piping in, the spectral energy was faint, nearly transparent with almost no color. The bird was too slow to escape it nonetheless. Its body fell, tangled inside the whip, landing on the ground in the ferns about ten feet from where Sesshomaru stood.

With a stern, hard face, Sesshomaru pulled the bird's carcass back to him and knelt, stooping to pick it up. The tiny bird was barely a mouthful of good meat, but it was twitching and still hot. Sesshomaru broke the bird's neck with two fingers and clawed at it, tearing its right wing off. Without bothering to strip the flesh of feathers—he could digest them with little trouble after all—Sesshomaru pushed the wing into his mouth. He had already severed the bird's head from its body by the time he noticed how dry his mouth was and how the taste of the bird's raw flesh, its blood, and its dusty feathers, had become repulsive. He stopped chewing, fighting the rise of nausea.

The delicate bird bones had splintered on his teeth. They poked into his gums. The warm, thick blood disgusted him; it was like sludge or a gruel in his mouth. _But this was what he'd eaten all his life in the wild._

Angrily, Sesshomaru bit down hard on the bones and dry feathers in his mouth. He forced his throat to stay closed, holding back the bile, disgust and nausea. Finally he swallowed and felt the comfortable expansion of his stomach as it accepted his first bite. Sesshomaru pushed the bird's head past his lips and ate it as well. He crushed the bird's chest and split apart the ribs. Inside were the vital organs. Sesshomaru picked them out, delicately, and ate them without even chewing. He discarded only the intestines, the tail feathers and the scaly legs.

As he tossed away the little bird's legs, Sesshomaru clumsily caught one strand of his hair on his claws. When he growled to himself and pulled his hand free—long white strands of hair fell away…

They were curled around his long, elfin fingers, mingled with the bird's blood and entrails. His hair—it was—Sesshomaru stared down at it, horrified.

Like a squeamish girl that has run into a spider's web, Sesshomaru pawed viciously at the hair on his hands, as if it disgusted him. In reality it was not disgust. His heart was pounding with fear, the sweat on his brow was hot and cold as his temperature oscillated.

Sesshomaru got to his feet, grimacing at the pain in his bones. The afternoon sunshine peeked through the trees, dappling the forest floor. The shaft of light fell on one of Sesshomaru's long strands of hair. It reflected the light, bright and shining, reflecting like metal. Sesshomaru scuffed at it with one foot and then stumbled, nearly falling over. After he had regained his balance he stared down at it and felt an odd emotion spill over him: despair.

_He was losing his hair and his powers._

* * *

In the little fishing village of Kagainsen dawn brought rough seas and wind. A few of the braver or more skilled fisherman ventured into the sea in spite of the rising, swelling waves. Normally Sao would've joined them, trailing his fishing lines and nets, baiting the lines for squid and joining with his friends to haul in their catches. If the sea prevented that Sao might join his wife and sister when they went with the other women to wade the shallows and the marshes, seeking clams, crabs, shrimp, and worms to bait smaller fish.

But on this day Kagainsen was not a normal place. Although the seas were unfriendly, they weren't impossible to traverse, yet few fishermen left their homes to drag their nets or bait their lines. Instead they stayed inside and brooded, talking amidst their families about the forest spirit that Sao and his wife had found the night before.

The "forest spirit," was bedded down inside Sao and his wife Taki's hut, sleeping after crying very much as any young child would. It was disconcerting for Sao and Taki. The "forest spirit" looked like a demon with her pale, perfect skin, her golden eyes and her white hair, but she cried like a real human girl. She even called out for a mother like a lost child. Taki had tried to wipe at the marks on the child's cheeks, as well as the crescent moon over her forehead, but she'd discovered that they weren't drawn or painted onto her, they were real skin. She came away from the experience believing that the child had been tattooed.

The girl woke again when Sao and Taki woke and began to ready themselves for the day. Sao sat by the open flap of their hut, staring with narrowed eyes at the sea. Other villagers passed by, peeking at Sao and waving before they hurried off, finding something else to do. None of them wanted to speak to Sao; they just wanted to gawk at the "forest spirit" that his wife had befriended.

Sao scowled at long last and twisted around to glare at his wife where she worked at the hearth, churning the ashes of their fire back to life. Her hands were sooty, her hair was messy and her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. She had recently been crying. Sao's scowling increased. "Taki, you should toss that thing out. It's just going to cause us both harm and everyone in the village thinks we're possessed."

Taki sighed and lifted one hand to rub her nose on her forearm. She tried to keep the smeared ash from getting onto her face but it did anyway. "You mean the little girl?"

"It isn't a little girl, Taki," Sao grumbled.

"It cries just like our daughter did," Taki said, quietly.

Sao closed his eyes, squeezing them tight. "Don't talk about that! _That isn't our daughter!"_

"She's just a little girl…" Taki sighed, sniffling as tears sprang into her eyes again. When she blinked them out of her eyes they fell into the smoking, glowing coals of their hearth.

"It's a forest spirit, some kind of demon. Did you see its fingers? Little girls don't have claws like that. What about her eyes, Taki? Tell me little girls have eyes like that."

"You worry about the sea!" Taki poked at the fire with renewed energy sprung from bitterness. "I'll worry about our home."

The child in question stirred then. She was lying on a scratchy wooden cot with a coarsely woven blanket thrown over her, covering her entire body, hiding it from prying eyes. The little girl's movement made Sao and Taki stare at her, waiting tensely.

Saya took in her foreign bed and blanket and immediately her chin wrinkled with remembered pain. She was separated from her mother, her father, her sister, and Lady Ginrei. Not even Jaken was around to keep her company or protect her. She looked up and recalled the faces of the humans that had cared for her through the previous night. The man had found her on the cliff top, naked and scared and alone. They had fed her salty, unseasoned fish and a small bowl of rice. They had also gone to search for her clothes and they'd returned with Saya's ragged robes.

She had thanked them through her tears, remembering that her mother had always insisted on such politeness. With her clothes came the stone that Aojiroi the fox had given her, tucked away inside a pocket in her sleeve. Her clothes were filthy and plastered with mud but even Saya's young, inexperienced eyes picked out that her robes were bright and rich compared to the dingy, coarse rags that the couple wore.

They watched her now with strange expressions that she couldn't read and couldn't make sense of, it was perhaps fear, but why should they be afraid? They were adults and they weren't lost like she was.

Saya sniffled and bowed to them, mumbling things she thought her mother would've said in the same situation. "You honor Saya. This Saya thanks you…"

Taki and Sao glanced at one another, baffled.

"I…" Saya stopped, twisting and working words around inside her skull. "This one must take leave of you now. Umm," she choked a little, biting back her tears, "Where are the Western Lands?"

"The Western Lands?" Taki repeated blankly like a parrot.

"A long, long ways away," Sao answered grumpily. "And we won't be taking you there."

"Husband!" Taki exclaimed, frowning at him. "Can't you see? She's just a lost little girl…"

"She's a demon! And I'm not going to let her drag us away somewhere. I just thought it would be good to let her know that straight off." Sao turned his back on Taki and Saya and heaved himself up off the ground, leaving the hut altogether. The flap over the door fell shut behind him, tossing up a layer of dust.

Alone with the woman, Saya ventured a quick question. Like a sponge is unable to keep itself from absorbing water, Saya could not stop herself from questioning the adults around her at every opportunity. This time she had heard Sao use an unfamiliar word when he described her. Saya's curiosity was immediately stirred. "What is _demon?"_

Taki stared at Saya, speechless. Her face hardened slightly and she bit harshly on her lips before speaking. She didn't answer Saya's question, instead she filled the air between them with her own. "Is your name Saya, then? Saya—where did you come from? How did you get here? Can you tell me about yourself?"

Saya hesitated. She had lived a sheltered life at Jouka. In her short lifetime Saya had met very few strangers. Her natural desire was to open up to Taki without restraint if it would help the mortal woman get her back home to her mother, but at the same time Saya knew enough about the world to anticipate that speaking without caution could backfire. She recalled her father's few words and her mother's careful use of language. The impression these things formed in Saya led to the idea that the world—and the strangers within it—were all people that would be easily offended if she spoke too much, too openly, or said the wrong thing.

It was a thick, troubling task for her four year old mind to wrap itself around.

Saya bowed again, fighting the trembling that had taken over her body. "This one's name is Saya, yes." She paused, thinking hard. "What is _demon?"_

"I'm Taki," the woman replied, once more avoiding the subject of _demon._ "Are you hungry, Saya?"

The answer to that question was yes, but Saya swallowed back her empty, hollow nausea in favor of returning to what mattered most: getting back to her family. "Lady Taki," she whispered, her voice beginning to quiver just as her body was, "Saya asks that you might tell her where the Western Lands are?"

Taki shook her head. "I don't know, really. The journey could be three days walk, or it might be closer to a week, maybe more." Taki picked up a thick, stained cloth and used it to shield her hand as she stirred up the rice sitting over the hearth fire, simmering. "Is that where you come from, Saya? The Western Lands? How did you come so far?"

Saya pulled the rough blanket that Sao and Taki had given her the night before up and over her head to cover her face as Taki's questions went on. It puzzled and frustrated her that Taki had evaded answering her question and somehow found an answer to her own. Now Taki knew that Saya originated in the Western Lands while Saya knew nothing about how to get home or how she'd come to be with the humans in their little village, alone.

Taki watched the little girl out of the corner of her eye. Her lips crinkled with sympathy when she saw Saya pull the blanket over her head and heard the little child whimpering, trying to hide her tears. Taki grabbed a bowl and heaved the pot off the hearth fire. She scooped some of the thick rice broth into the bowl and dug through a bag of spices to season the rice. When she had stirred it, Taki approached the little wooden slat where Saya's tiny form was shaking with her tiny, stifled sobbing.

"Saya," Taki called gently. "I have some rice for you, dear. It's all right. Don't cry, I'm here to help you if you'll let me." She pulled the blanket slowly from Saya's head and body. The little girl was lying on her side, curled into a fetal position. Her hair was wild and dirty but even in the dark, stuffy hut Taki could see its brightness, like freshly fallen snow.

Taki swallowed thickly, feeling her chest constrict with a still-fresh pain. Saya was not her daughter, but it was easy for Taki to see her dead daughter in Saya. Even their names—Taki's daughter had been named Suki. Saya and Suki began with the same vowel sound. To voice one name gave rise to thinking of the other. Perhaps Sao was right and Saya was a demon that had come to take advantage of their grief. But when she looked at Saya's small, sobbing shoulders as they quivered, Taki felt nothing but pity and a maternal need to stop the girl's tears.

"I have rice for you, it's still hot. Come now, stop crying. You're safe here…" Taki set the bowl of rice at the edge of the plank and reached out tentatively to lay her hands on Saya's head of white hair. When she touched the girl Saya fell still, even her breathing stopped. Taki wormed her fingers through Saya's thick, soft hair, feeling the dirt and debris still caught in it from her flight through the forest.

"Would you like a bath, little Saya? I can warm the water for you while you eat your rice…"

Saya lifted her head from the wooden slat and nodded. "Yes, Lady Taki."

Taki smiled warmly down at Saya. Taki's fingers, fat and calloused from housework, were gentle as they smoothed Saya's hair out of her face, exposing the little girl's wide and disturbingly golden eyes staring up at her. "You don't need to call me a Lady, little one. Taki is just fine." She laughed lightly, "Where did you learn to speak that way?"

Saya's lips moved, almost imperceptibly and the single word was too faint for Taki to pick it up. "What was that?"

Saya repeated it at last, a little louder. "Mother," she closed her eyes and a few tears slipped out from beneath her eyelids. "Mama taught Saya to always be polite."

"Who is your mother?" Taki asked, kindly. "Is she…" Taki paused; allowing herself to frown only because Saya had her eyes closed and wouldn't see it. "Is she _human?"_

Saya's little face screwed up with confusion. She opened her eyes and stared up at Taki. Like most humans she had brown eyes and black, straight hair. Her skin was darker than Saya's, but not by all that much. Saya and Hanone were both fair skinned, but between them Hanone was the lighter, a reflection of her pureblooded nature. Saya showed more of Rin's influence in her slightly darker skin, yet when compared with Taki, Saya was still pale as a ghost because of her sheltered lifestyle as well as the inuyoukai half of her heritage.

For Saya there was little value on Rin's identity as a demon or as a human. It barely seemed relevant to her. Why would Taki ask? After a time, Saya whispered an answer. "Yes."

Taki pressed onward, leaning a little closer to Saya. "Does your mother look like you, Saya?"

At last Saya thought she understood Taki's meaning. If Saya could describe her mother to Taki than it would help them get her home, surely that was the answer. She answered with a rush of fresh energy and excitement. "No, Mother does not look like Saya. Mother has long black hair and brown eyes like mud. Mother smells like plum blossoms and jasmine. Mother also smells like wildflowers. Mother smells like the earth after the snow starts to melt…"

"Really?" Taki asked, backing away. She forced the enthusiasm into her voice to cover her consternation. What child described its mother by the way she _smelled?_ Perhaps Saya was being untruthful when she claimed that her mother was human. "What is your mother's name, little one?"

Saya frowned for a split second and then slowly answered, "Lady Ginrei calls Mother Lady Rin."

"Lady Rin?" Taki repeated, parroting Saya. The name meant nothing to her. Was it a code name for the earth? Was "Rin" a demon spirit that represented the earth that Saya, if she was an evil demon as Sao thought, served by tricking and luring mourning mothers into the distant Western Lands…?

"Yes," Saya murmured. She eyed the bowl of rice and then grabbed it, poking at it with her clawed fingers. She was so taken with the food before her that she failed to notice Taki's face paling as the mortal woman noticed Saya's clawed hands.

Taki's fear vanished when Saya made a face and pushed the bowl away from her. She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue like a panting dog. "It's hot," she whimpered, pawing at her throat.

"I didn't put that much in it…" Taki said, taking the bowl away and sampling some of the rice gruel on one fingertip. She mulled it over in her mouth and then shook her head. "Sao likes it this way, and so did…my daughter…"

Saya had shifted, moving back closer to the wall of the hut. She arched her back, gagging and coughing more like an animal than a human. Taki watched, spellbound. She had seen uncountable mongrel dogs around the village do the same when they'd eaten something that disagreed with them. Nothing came up when Saya gagged, but her face was twisted with discomfort and she kept her tongue out and her mouth open. Comically she even scratched at her tongue, as if trying to fight off the offending taste.

Taki took the spiced rice away and grabbed another bowl. She scooped the bland rice gruel into the new bowl and set it before Saya. "Try this one, it's just rice. It will hardly have any taste at all."

"Saya is grateful," the little girl told her without looking at the food and without stopping her bizarre panting. "But she is not hungry."

"Are you sure? All growing children must eat…" Taki baited her.

Before Saya could answer, they were interrupted by loud, angry voices coming from just outside the flap covering the door. Taki turned to stare at it while Saya cowered and grabbed the blanket, trying to hide as the shouting grew louder.

"Please Mr. Yamaiko—I have been trying to deal with this matter myself. Just give my wife and I a little more time…" it was Sao, pleading in a high, desperate voice.

"Even one night harboring that monster was too much," a deep, dark voice growled.

Taki bowed as Yamaiko lifted the flap to her hut and stormed in. He was a tall man, thick with muscle and dressed in a coarse gray-white set of robes with a large, round hat atop his head. He was the village's Shinto priest, a powerful authority as a leader in religion and as a member of the community. His dark eyes roved over Sao and Taki's hut, easily landing on the lump where Saya was hiding, whimpering faintly.

"Mr. Yamaiko," Taki said, rising out of her bow, "Please, the child is not a demon; she is simply a strange child…"

"So she has already deceived you, Taki," Yamaiko grunted, scowling. "This beast may be tiny but her power for evil must be enormous. How ingenious these beasts are to pose as an innocent child. We are only fortunate that she cannot mold her appearance to look completely human." He strode stolidly past Taki, shaking off her hands when she clutched at his robes, begging him to stop.

Yamaiko ripped the blanket from over Saya's head. She held it as he pulled, forcing the priest to yank several times. His brown eyes narrowed, crinkling viciously at the corners when Saya's bright hair was exposed and he caught a flash of her pointed, predatory claws.

"Little demon," he snarled. Yamaiko reached for her but Saya slashed at him with her claws. She scrabbled over the wooden plank, trying to get away from him.

Yamaiko began to chant. He pressed forward as Saya backed away only to run into the wall of the hut. She bared her teeth at him like a cornered animal while her body shook, paralyzed by fear.

"Please," Taki shouted plaintively. "She's just a girl!"

Sao wrapped his arms around her when she tried to rise to stop Yamaiko. "Taki, it's for the best. Just let it go! Mr. Yamaiko is right—the demon is in our heads…"

"No!" Taki gave in and closed her eyes, lowering her head shamefully. She murmured a name, but it wasn't Saya's, it wasn't even the demon-girl that she shed tears for. Her thoughts dwelled on another girl that had died in her hut, in almost the same spot where Saya would now perish.

Yamaiko's hands had begun to glow purple at the tips. He lunged and touched Saya's exposed calf. She clawed at him, purposefully aiming at his clothes. The fabric screamed as it was sheared apart, but Yamaiko's one touch had done its work well. A purple light spilled over Saya's body, burning at her skin and flowing over her robes. It was as if she were on fire.

Saya screamed, writhing and struggling.

Yamaiko withdrew and cradled the arm that Saya had slashed at, searching for injuries. He had been lucky, Saya was young and inexperienced, and unknown to Yamaiko Saya had also learned self-restraint. Had he been a demon slayer he might've looked at Saya and known better than to confront her. An educated demon slayer would have seen Saya's markings and realized that she was inuyoukai, the child of a clan. Inuyoukai did not usually allow their young out and alone for long…

He also would have known by examining her—in the little quirks like Saya's rounded, human ears and her missing pointed canine teeth—that Saya was not _completely_ inuyoukai.

"Little wretch should die now," Yamaiko grunted. He turned a deaf ear to Saya's very human-like crying and stared down at Taki and Sao where they had collapsed together, teary-eyed and grieving. Behind him Saya fell abruptly silent. Yamaiko sighed and smiled stiffly. "Your ordeal is over at last. I will destroy the remains and return to purify your home, Sao."

Yamaiko turned, already reaching out with one hand to snatch up the little demon's remains, only to freeze in shock. Backed up against the wall there was no carcass for him to handle, only a little girl. It was Saya, quivering with terror and whimpering as she blinked her thick puffy eyes, taking in a changed world. Her hair was messy as it had been moments before, but the color had changed to a deep black, and her eyes had darkened into brown. The marks over her cheeks were gone and the crescent moon on her forehead was absent.

She was a human girl, unrecognizable as the demon that Yamaiko had come to purify.

* * *

End note: Writing from Saya's perspective as essentially half dog, I figured that she would describe Rin with scent a lot. What I wrote with Saya babbling I feel was hardly accurate to the point I imagine it would be for a real hanyou. As Cesar Milan says of dogs senses and how they view the world it is: nose, ears, eyes in that order. I'm trying to hold to that sense with Sess's transformation too (he's very preoccupied with not being able to smell). But I wanted to draw on my own scent-memories from my childhood, especially a "woman" smell I remember, not perfume, but something I just couldn't describe. I wanted to say it smelled like dirt, wet dirt, but that isn't accurate, and it doesn't sound like something you would want to say your mom smelled like, but that would be the truthful thing. Instead what came out was all perfume-ish and pretty and fake. Irritates me. Gr. Anyway, that was my longish note about smelling.

Next time:

_Her father smiled, a sad and melancholy expression. "You cannot stay here, Daughter. Your thoughts have been tainted by this world. You are forgetting your present and your future. This realm always dwells on the past because it is all that we have."_

"_What is my fate then?" Rin asked. Her heart had begun to slow, her head seemed to hollow itself out. The deep calm descended on her once more. _

"_You will be reborn," Rin's mother announced, smiling. _


	12. Innocence Lost

A/N: Stormy day outside, beautiful. I am a big fan of thunder storms, except for when they knock out my power. This chapter is psychologically disturbing at the end, but at least it isn't too huge of a cliffhanger. Phew. Anyway, I was pretty proud of this chapter when it tumbled out of me. Yay! Enjoy :)

Disclaimer: I do not own them.

Last Chapter: Soeki came and dragged Ginrei out of Sasugainu's bedroom. Sesshomaru continued his transformation. Saya met Sao and Taki, who took her in and fed her. Then the Shinto priest Yamaiko came in and tried to purify her unsuccessfully of course.

**Innocence Lost**

The mist was thick around Rin, flowing past the darkness of the pine trees like incorporeal ghosts, following their own lines and roads. She followed the spirit of her father, always struggling to keep up with him. Her father passed over the hills and the mud without truly touching them while Rin found that her legs and hands came away thick and sticky and slow. Her mother followed her at a distance, at the edge of where the mists disrupted Rin's backward view.

They passed a maple tree. Rin stopped, leaning against the bark, smearing mud and grass clippings onto its bark. She panted, sucking hard on the dense, wet air. When she gazed upward Rin saw that the tree was barren, as if it were wintertime. The leaves at her feet were an ugly, withered gray-brown.

"_You must go on, Daughter," _Rin's mother whispered behind her in a voice that was dead and dry, withered like the leaves at the foot of the maple.

"Tell me what's going to happen to me," Rin pleaded. "Tell me whatever you know, please." She peeked over her shoulder and saw her mother's spirit, the outline of her face soft and gentle and indistinct. "Mamma," she swallowed a sudden rush of emotion and sniffled, closing her eyes.

Memories passed before her closed eyes. A high voice singing to her, hands over her hair, a spicy food that she devoured happily. Rin had not eaten spicy food since she had come to live with Sesshomaru. Inuyoukai had a delicate sense of taste and they couldn't tolerate spiced food. It had to be an old memory, buried beneath a layer of pain, lost with a past life.

When she opened her eyes her mother was smiling. Her colorless eyes were crinkled in the corners, filled with what Rin interpreted as sadness.

"Please," she repeated. "Tell me where we're going. What's going to happen to me?"

Her mother stepped forward, her legs moved imperceptibly and she floated over the leaf-strewn ground. She reached out with her fleshless, gray hand. Rin could see through it to the trees behind them in the distance. Her mother's hand landed on her messy black hair, moving over it and then into her hair. Rin shivered and stumbled backward as her insides chilled. Her stomach tightened and grew cold, as if she'd swallowed a block of ice.

"_We will give you away," _her mother whispered, choking as if she were about to sob.

"Give me away?" Rin asked, suddenly nauseous. Her body was still cold. Her heart had begun to pound inside her. Breathing became a little easier but her head felt heavy and thick. "What's happening to me?"

Her father's voice came from behind her, startling Rin into turning around and pressing her back to the leafless maple. He said, _"The real world is pulling on your soul. You will feel it many times while you are here. Your body is living but your soul has been trapped here by Jishin."_

"How do I get out?" Rin asked, searching between her mother and her father. The pain inside her continued, the suppressed memories of her girlhood welling up to make her throat burn with grief. Her father was gray and transparent before her in the spirit world, but in life he had been sunny, marked by field work and filled with energy. He had wide shoulders and Rin had ridden on them as a tiny child about Saya's age. She could remember the musical quality of his laughter, ringing out through their tiny home.

"_We are leading you to those that have been assigned to help you," _her father answered.

Part of her mourned the thought of leaving them. _I never got a chance to know them. They were taken from me so long ago._

Her father smiled, a sad and melancholy expression. _"You cannot stay here, Daughter. Your thoughts have been tainted by this world. You are forgetting your present and your future. This realm always dwells on the past because it is all that we have."_

"What is my fate then?" Rin asked. Her heart had begun to slow, her head seemed to hollow itself out. The deep calm descended on her once more.

"_You will be reborn," _Rin's mother announced, smiling.

"Reborn?" Rin shook her head, helpless to understand their meaning.

"_You must continue,"_ her father said. He turned his back to her and began to move forward. His body hovered centimeters from the ground, moving with walking motions that didn't match his rate of speed.

Rin bit her lip hard and felt almost nothing as her front teeth sank a little into her flesh. She had oscillated wildly between the deathly calm that was over her now and the wild grief that had filled her when she'd stopped by the maple. The spirit realm was a confusing, frightening place where even her perception of the world wavered uncontrollably.

With a last look at her mother Rin stumbled after her father. The sound of her feet over the dead maple leaves was muffled, lost as if she were an old woman that had nearly gone deaf with her age. A howling sound came through the trees and the mists moved, swirling and passing through the trees and the hollows between the hills.

Suddenly, an unknown amount of time later as far as Rin was concerned, a tori gate loomed up out of the mists. Rin stopped, nearly running into one of the posts. It was gray-blue, like everything else within the spirit world. Whatever its true color was, the structure was faded and melancholy in the spirit realm. Rin felt over the structure and considered her parents wandering spirits. _Did I pray for them enough? Could they resent me?_ She wanted to feel guilt and shame and grief at the thought but nothing came. Her mind and her heart were empty and blank.

Her mother's spirit materialized through the thick fog. Her eyes had the same pained expression. _"You must not stop to think. Time passes in this realm much slower than it does in the lands of the living."_

Wordlessly, Rin nodded and passed beneath the tori gate. There was a path where dirt and gravel had been laid to push back the gray-green grass at either side. Rin followed it, staring at the ground. She looked up every so often to catch sight of her father's feet at the edge of the mist, cutting through it.

Stairs appeared, brown-gray. Rin recognized them as belonging to a shrine. She ascended them and saw a sliding door appear out of the mists before her. Her father had disappeared but when Rin glanced behind her she saw both of her parents hovering at the foot of the little stairs, staring up at her.

"Is this where I'm supposed to go?" she asked them.

Both of them nodded, solemnly. Her father answered aloud, _"Yes, Daughter."_

"Aren't you coming with me?" Rin asked. Her heart had picked up again, pounding irregularly. She tipped over dizzily and reached for the railing on the stairs, catching herself before she fell.

"_This is where we must give you away,"_ her mother said.

"Give me up?" Rin asked.

"_You do not belong to us," _her father said. _"We must give you to your Fate,"_

"I don't understand," Rin started unsteadily back down the stairs, but with each step she took her parents moved away from her, fading into the grayness of the thick mist. "Wait, don't go yet! Please!"

"_You cannot save us, Daughter."_ Her father's spirit moved close to her mother, wrapping one of his incorporeal arms around her shoulder. _"Please do not delay for us. We do not wish you to suffer because of our memory."_

"But please," Rin stopped at the edge of the stairs and dropped to her knees. The ground felt cold, startlingly so. The grass was wet when she touched it. "Just stay with me a little longer. I'm…I'm afraid…"

"_This world has tainted you already, Daughter,"_ her mother whispered, again choking on the words. _"You cannot stay with us. We have passed on. We are content."_

"Please stay with me," Rin begged. She doubled over, touching her forehead to the ground. "Your presence comforts me." She recalled her mother's song again; her father's powerful, calloused hands stroking her hair. The spicy taste of her mother's cooking. The feel of stubble on her father's cheeks and her mother's screams as the bandits raped her. _"Please,_" she sobbed, "Stay with me…"

"_If we do,"_ her father murmured. _"You will die."_

Her mother added, _"You have a wonderful destiny, Daughter. My little Rin. Please, do not think of us in death. You must live on and fight for your children, our grandchildren."_

Rin shivered, feeling weak and powerless, as if she had become a child again, hiding in the storage space in the wall with the spiders and the squeaking mice, listening as her family died outside.

"I'm sorry," she cried. She looked up with the tears streaming down her face and her mouth fell open in surprise. Her parents had vanished, leaving her alone at the foot of the shrine stairs in the mist.

For a time Rin held herself there, sniffling and fighting the strange flow of emotions and sensations that passed through her wildly. Sounds reached her through the mist, frogs peeping, birds calling and singing, and water dripping. It began to rain, a light shower made of heavy, fate droplets that fell on Rin's head and back, soaking through her robes and her flesh, straight to the bone.

Slowly she got to her feet and climbed the shrine stairs again, wiping her face with her muddied kimono sleeves. The door to the shrine stood before her, gray-yellow with black ink drawings of leaves curling over the corners. Rin fought to breathe. Her head was growing light once more. Her body felt empty and hollow, her mind was slow, as if caught in mud.

She reached for the door, but before her hand had grasped it the door slid open, clatteringly. Rin blinked and looked up, shivering as the remnants of the rain dripped from her plastered bangs. The inside of the shrine was lit with a surprising, almost jarring orange-yellow light. Through a window on the far opposite wall Rin saw the mist and the gray-green pine trees surrounded by the mists.

Directly in front of her Rin saw a young monk, gray and transparent as her parents had been. He smiled at her with the same sadness. It seemed that all the spirits appeared melancholy.

"_Hello Lady Rin,"_ the monk murmured in a dry, hoarse voice. _"I am called Kokoro."_

* * *

For a moment there was nothing but silence inside Sao and Taki's hut. Then Yamaiko sneered and lunged for Saya. "Little beast! How did you survive that purification spell? What manner of demon are you?"

His huge, meaty hands fell on Saya's robes and hefted her up off the plank of wood. Saya screamed, struggling against him. She pleaded with him incoherently to let her go. Yamaiko responded by giving her a hard shake.

Saya's body was as limp and weak as a doll's. Yamaiko's shaking could easily kill her.

Taki grabbed Yamaiko's arm, stopping him. "Please, Mr. Yamaiko! She is human! She is _human!_"

Yamaiko's grip loosened. Saya squirmed and her outer robe and obi slipped, falling open. Saya landed back on the wooden plank and leaped away on her shaky legs. She was dressed in her bland under robe, stained but otherwise colored gold as her eyes had been. She stumbled toward the flap covering the door of the hut.

Sao caught her arm as it flailed through the air, halting her a few feet from the door flap. She clawed at his arm but found that her hands had lost their strength. Her fingers ended in soft nails now. She stared up at Sao in horror; her tiny mouth worked the air, forming a single word that she barely voiced at all: _"Daddy…"_

Sao's eyes widened and he released Saya as Yamaiko came barreling after her. Saya vanished out the door, running for her life half on her hind legs and halfway on all fours.

"What's the matter with you Sao?" Yamaiko demanded, angrily. "You let the beast escape! The power of that demon! She can change her appearance to look exactly like a child when threatened. I have never seen a creature that could survive my purification spell." His voice changed, lowering with rage. "And you let it go Sao! And your wife is possessed trying to protect it."

Sao shook his head helplessly. "I'm sorry Mr. Yamaiko. She looked at me and she called me daddy…" he blinked and pawed at the tear that escaped his eye, frowning in embarrassment.

"Of course it did! The beast is manipulating you!" Yamaiko snarled disdainfully. He pushed past Sao and exited the hut, searching over the village for the girl.

A line of children caught his eye, playing at the edge of the forest, shouting and chasing one another. One of them wore an under robe of yellow. Yamaiko started in that direction, stomping over the ground on his massive, powerful feet. Halfway there he saw the girl turn and he stopped, recognizing her as one of the elder's daughters by her crooked, oversized teeth. He scowled and shouted at the children anyway, disturbing their play. "Children! Come here! I need your help!"

They rushed to him and bowed respectfully, uttering his name in serious, solemn tones. Yamaiko had saved their village from rampaging demons many times. He was almost godlike to the children.

"The forest spirit that Sao and his wife caught last night has altered her appearance to escape me. She looks like a human girl now. You must help me find her," he told them, pointing around the huts. "She's wearing gold, like the sunset."

The children nodded and rushed off, splintering into groups and racing between the huts. Their laughter had vanished. Yamaiko moved to the nearest hut and called out to the family inside. He would visit each hut and tell them of the forest spirit that had evaded him by changing her appearance. Any unfamiliar child they found in the village they should immediately detain for him.

* * *

Saya had run beyond the village. She was clumsy, tripping over roots and discarded fishing nets. Her tears blinded her, making her almost collide once with a hut and a covered cart filled with salted fish. Her nose told her nothing of the fish until she had run into it. The world was radically altered for Saya. The sun was too bright, the sound of the ocean too faint, and the scents of the village all but vanished.

When she came to the sea, Saya stopped. She had never seen it before and the sight of it made her fall onto her tiny knees. A cool wind blew off it, riffling her black hair. For the first time she noticed the change and pulled on the strands only to be startled when she found that they were _attached to her._ For a time she pulled on her hair, obsessively, until her scalp ached and she let go and began to cry.

No one had ever tried to kill her before. No one had ever harmed her purposefully. Saya had also never transformed into a human before. The two experiences together were overwhelming and confounding. Adding to it her first sight of the sea, going on limitlessly to the horizon, Saya wondered if she had slipped into another world completely.

Footsteps came pounding over the beach sand. Saya looked up and over her shoulder. Her legs were weak with terror, but she got to her feet and faced her pursuers. They were two children, older than her and taller. One of them pointed to her and both of them ran at her, shouting at her. "Demon, demon!"

Saya recognized that word. She turned and ran as fast as she could, but her normal agility, bestowed upon her by her inuyoukai half, was missing. She faltered, growing quickly exhausted. Her lungs burned and she started to cough. She stumbled and fell into the surf, the thick wet sand.

The children closed in fast behind her. The boy grabbed her waist, heaving her up from the ground. Saya screeched, kicking at him. The girl appeared in front of her and grabbed at Saya's hands and legs, slapping them. Her face was contorted into a little snarl. "Are you the demon Mr. Yamaiko told us about?"

"Let go!" Saya screamed.

The boy pulled on her hair and spoke over Saya's crying. "She sounds like all the little kids do."

"Mr. Yamaiko said she was a demon!" the girl insisted, frowning. She looked back at Saya and shouted at her, "Who are you, kid?"

"Saya!" she sobbed, keening. "Saya! Saya!" the politeness that Rin had instilled in Saya died at last. "My name is Saya!"

"Are you a demon?" the boy asked, calling straight into Saya's human ears.

"No," Saya cried. "No, no, no." That was the answer they wanted, so she would give it. She didn't know what _demon_ was exactly. She understood _human_ and _inuyoukai_ but not _demon,_ and not _beast._ She understood only that _demon_ was bad and she did not want to be it.

The boy dropped her and backed away. "She doesn't sound like a monster."

The girl was unconvinced. She pushed Saya's shoulder. The force of the blow was easily enough to knock Saya's body over into the oncoming surf. Salty water splashed and bubbled over Saya's body, wetting her black hair and covering her puffy eyes and her tears. She rose out of the water dripping and shivering. Her shoulders shook as she continued to sob. "Momma," she whimpered, "Momma…"

"She cries just like a baby!" the boy said, sighing. "Now our parents are going to be angry because we made her cry." He jabbed a finger at the girl. "You were too rough on her!"

"We don't know anyone named Saya," the girl snapped. "Yoji you're an idiot."

Saya grabbed fistfuls of the wet beach sand in her fists and rushed forward at the girl that had pushed her over. She threw one fistful of the wet sand on the girl's chest, the other landed on her face. The girl cried out and fell backward. Saya escaped, rushing past her.

The boy, Yoji, laughed at the girl with sand in her face. "See, if she was a demon she'd have killed you!"

"Shut up and go after her, moron!"

By the time the children looked after where Saya had run she was vanished. Her footsteps curled away from the beach and into the forest.

"You lost her, Yoji!"

"What? You're the one that got sand in your face, Satetsu!"

Saya left their quarreling voices behind on the beach.

* * *

The story that Yoji and Satetsu returned to Yamaiko with made the Shinto priest scowl with frustration. The beast had escaped back into the forest. Something in Yamaiko's gut told him that the trickster would return to trouble them.

He was forced to concede that his attack—which was usually completely effective—had failed. The beast that called itself Saya, as was repeated by Taki and by Yoji and Satetsu, had not killed anyone, but Yamaiko suspected that she would bring an increasing amount of trouble to them now that she had faced Yamaiko and won. She could steal their catches and hauls from the sea, curse them with holes in their nets or with vanished prey. If she didn't like fish she might begin luring children into the forest, killing them and draining them of blood, eating their livers, or whatever foul thing she wanted.

A day passed and Yamaiko stayed about the village, listening for any word of foul doing, for any appearance by the beast called Saya. Children reported that a strange childlike creature had appeared near the salted fish storage hut. Yamaiko and the village elders checked the hut and found that at one corner someone had dug underneath it. The claw marks in the dirt were like those of a wild animal, a mongrel dog foraging for food. But inside the hut the crates and nets had been generally undisturbed, and the footprints around the hut and inside it were tiny and human.

In the evening the fish traders arrived. The fishermen gathered around the traders' carts. Certain weights of fish were traded for bags of rice and for coins. Yamaiko collected his usual tax from the fishermen's trading, a few bags of rice and a few dessert items like plums and cherries.

One of the traders, an old grizzled man by the name of Miyazi, heard the gossip floating about the village. As Yamaiko exchanged a few coins with the trader to acquire some rice paper and a special, thick-weaved rope, Miyazi caught his hand and started speaking with a sly look in his eyes. "I heard you have a problem with a demon."

Yamaiko yanked his hand away from Miyazi's grasp and wiped it off fastidiously on his robes. "Recently there has been a shape shifting beast that has caused some trouble, yes."

"Demons are like mice," Miyazi smirked. "They breed if you let them settle in. You have to bring in the cat Mr. Yamaiko, kill them before they make a nest."

"That was what I tried to do," Yamaiko frowned. "The beast deceived us. It took advantage of a grieving mother and disguised itself as a child. I purified it and the beast appeared as a perfect little girl. I have never seen a demon disguise itself so thoroughly." He paused, seeing Miyazi's expression and hesitating as he realized that the trader was not simply speaking for the sake of hearing his own voice. There was an ulterior motive. "What do you suggest?"

"Well it sounds like what you've got is a kitsune." Miyazi sniffed and casually began chewing on his nails. "I know some people that specialize in that."

"What people?" Yamaiko asked, scowling.

"Slayers in my town. They usually live some ways inland, but they're staying with a rich fellow that lives in my town right now." He made a face, apparently not liking the 'rich fellow,' that the slayers were staying with. "If you gave me a little something extra, or had them give me a cut of their pay, I'd _love_ to tell them that you have a job for them to do. I'm sure they're just _bored as hell_ up there."

Yamaiko pursed his lips, thinking hard and weighing his options as well as his coin purse. "Do you know anything of kitsune? Will this beast leave us alone?"

"I doubt it," Miyazi said. "Kitsune are just like those mice I was telling you about. They find some place to take advantage of and they make a little nest. Real big pests, especially when they start fraternizing with the young girls."

Yamaiko sighed, defeated. He lifted his coin purse and shook out three silvered coins. "I will give you this for now, it is all I can spare. What would these slayers ask for in payment?"

"Depends on the job I'd imagine," Miyazi said, snatching Yamaiko's coins and fingering them, counting. "I would think they would be happy to trade their services for fresh fish and you have plenty of that."

"Are they good people? They won't rob our village, will they?" Yamaiko asked. "Are they talented slayers?" He shook his head. "I don't want their blood on my hands."

"Well if you don't bring in slayers you'll have the blood of these fine villagers on your hands, Mr. Yamaiko. Sorry to say, but that's the truth. The longer that little beast stays here the stronger it will get. When it starts breeding it might start eating humans too." Miyazi pocketed the coins and nodded to Yamaiko. "I will give word to the slayers as soon as I get back to town. I don't know them that well, but the rumor around town is that it's a family business. A father and his sons or something like that." He chuckled dismissively, "If you want to believe the crazies they say that these slayers are the very best…"

Yamaiko sighed, "I hope there is some truth in it."

* * *

After a night on her own, separated from the humans in Kagainsen, Saya was a shadow of the happy, confident girl that had played in the field outside of Jouka. She had become silent and wary, like an animal. She relied on her senses implicitly and adapted herself quickly to survive.

Her demonic powers had returned during her first night alone, coming back to her while she slept. When she woke the following morning, famished and thirsty, Saya had patrolled the edge of the forest for more than an hour, waiting for a moment when the little river that Kagainsen village was built next to was abandoned. When her moment came she had drank until she nearly vomited and then tried to sneak into the hut that smelled of salted fish. The door on the fish hut was solid wood and it was locked. Saya tried to dig a hole at the corner of the building to wriggle under the wall but a few children had stumbled on her before she could finish. She retreated to sleep away her hunger.

When she awoke at night and saw the village abandoned, filled only with the sounds of snoring and the bubbles of digestion, she knew that she had found the answer.

The humans were daylight creatures. Their senses were weaker than her own, a fact that Saya knew even from her sheltered lifestyle with her mother, Hanone, and Ginrei. During the nighttime Kagainsen was deserted and quiet. Only a few people slipped out of their huts, staggering to the edge of the forest to relieve themselves. Saya avoided those latrine spots, not only because they stank but also because of their activity.

On that night, her second spent in the forest, Saya dug her way into the fish hut. She ate her fill of fish and then snuck back out. She drank at the little river, slurping the water up into her mouth until she couldn't swallow another ounce. With her little belly protruding and aching, she curled into a ball and whimpered. Her hands clenched up on the dirt for a time until she remembered the hidden pocket where she'd stored the magical white stone that the fox Jinsoku had given her.

Saya pulled out the stone and squeezed it in her palm. She thought on it, as if she were praying. _I want to go home. I want to see Momma. I want to see Father. I want to see Little Sister. I want to see Jaken-sama and Lady Ginrei._ Another, darker thought passed through her mind as her stomach cramped up. _I wish I was big and strong. I wish I could…_ Saya stopped, frowning. Part of her wanted to voice a desire to hurt the humans that had hurt her, to gain revenge. Another part wanted only to be strong to stop them from hurting her.

She recalled the way her father had pushed away the inuyoukai that had gotten too close to her at Shimofuri's wedding. _I want to be strong like Daddy._ She allowed herself to lapse in her mind and name her father as _daddy_ rather than the traditional _father. _

_I want Daddy to come for me. Come save me Daddy._

The water on the river rippled under a faint wind, refracting the silvered moonlight. Saya opened her palm and saw the light gleaming from her magic stone. _It's working,_ she thought and grinned, closing her eyes.

When she opened them again, bleary and sluggish with exhaustion, the moon was gone and the sky was lit pink with dawn. Voices whispered around her.

Terror swept through Saya, resurfacing as she realized that she had fallen asleep. The shelter of the nighttime was gone and the villagers had found her when they walked out for their morning water.

A hand fell over her shoulder, pulling her up. Saya saw through her filthy white hair the hard face of a teenage human, a boy. He wore only his peasant pants, ripped and torn at the bottom and at the waist. Saya squirmed; fighting him, but the boy grabbed her wrists in one hand of his own and hauled her up. Her feet dangled, kicking over the ground.

Another boy spoke in a cracking voice, caught between the heights of his childhood and the depths maturity. "Yamaiko says it's dangerous, Odaku."

"The hell it is," Odaku replied, holding Saya out at arm's length and letting her kick at him and gnash her claws together where he held her hands. "We'll see how dangerous it really is."

"Odaku," the other boy said in a hushed voice, "What are you going to do?"

Odaku dropped Saya onto the ground and advanced on her before she could move. He pulled on her under robe, at the small white strip of fabric that kept the robe closed. Saya's struggling made his work difficult and finally he changed positions, sitting on the tiny girl's chest while his hands scratched at her legs. He hiked Saya's robe higher, sneering the entire time.

"Do you see this?" he asked the other boy. "This fabric is rich-people stuff. This stuff costs a _fortune._" He pulled on one edge of the gold robe, trying to tear it and couldn't. Frustrated, Odaku hiked the robes higher still and began to force Saya's small thighs apart.

"Odaku!" the other boy shouted, alarmed. "What the hell are you doing? She's a _demon…"_

Saya had been struggling against Odaku from the beginning, but part of her avoided his skin with her claws. She understood and had from a young age that her claws were powerful, dangerous tools. She had accidentally scratched the maids and her mother from time to time and learned that she could cause them fear and pain. Their expressions when these accidents happened was all the punishment she needed to make her more careful. When she did use her claws on purpose the action was always controlled, done just enough to frighten someone into letting her go. But Odaku didn't respond to that. His broad back sat squarely on her, his weight pressing on her chest, choking her—and his hand probing lower and lower between her legs.

Odaku grunted. "Look at that—Yamaiko was wrong. This isn't a demon; it's just a funny looking girl…" his expression darkened with a sadistic hunger. He moved off Saya's chest and turned to face her. He grabbed one of her hands and fumbled for the other while he pulled on his pants.

"Odaku…" the other boy hissed in warning.

"Help me hold her," Odaku grunted.

When the other boy started to approach her, something snapped inside Saya. Pressure built inside her chest. She saw Odaku's face and felt rage for the very first time in her short, innocent life.

Odaku reached for her hand, the only weapon Saya had left. Saya slashed at him, shouting something incoherently. She put in every ounce of strength that she had.

Her claws met up with his hand and sank easily into the flesh, muscle, and then the bone.

Odaku's screams joined Saya's, drowning them out as her blow severed his hand. His eyes bulged out with shock and agony. Blood spurted into the air, spraying like a water fountain. The scent made Saya breathe hard and increased the pressure inside her chest. Building, building. Her heart pounded, her tiny body shook with adrenaline.

The other boy screamed out for help. He shouted repeatedly, "Demon! Demon! Help me! Help us!"

Saya leapt at Odaku and slashed at him blindly. Her claws raked over his chest, cutting straight to his ribs. Saya's feet splashed through the puddle of Odaku's blood, splattering it onto her calves and her exposed thighs. She bared her fangless teeth, her eyes flashed red.

Screams and shouts erupted through the village. Saya heard them and turned to watch as adults barreled through the huts, racing toward Saya and her downed prey. She stared back at Odaku and saw that he was dying, convulsing as the blood poured out of his wrist where his hand had been severed.

The instinct changed inside Saya when she spotted Yamaiko rushing toward her. Terror infiltrated the pressure and rage boiling through her blood. Saya turned and ran.

She splashed through the river and rushed, half-running and half-leaping into the shadow of the forest. The villagers did not stop their pursuit. Saya heard them shouting to one another and cursing her. She thought quickly, seeking a way to vanish. On the ground they could see where she went by her footprints, or by her scent—had they been inuyoukai or hanyou that was. Without thinking long into it, Saya leapt for a low branch in the tree and began climbing. She clung to the trunk and held her breath as the villagers raced past her tree.

As their voices faded, Saya at last loosened her grip on the tree and stared down at her clawed hands. Her face was sticky with Odaku's blood. Her hands looked as if she had spilled a huge vat of red dye over them. Saya tried to rub the blood from her hands onto her robe but her robe was splattered with it too.

Saya stayed in the tree for hours, straining her ears for the sound of her pursuers. None came. Later in the afternoon she heard wailing from the villagers, mourning Odaku's death. The sound was sad and Saya felt a desire to raise her own voice in a howl to grieve as well—but not for Odaku. She wanted to cry for her mother, for her little sister, for Ginrei and especially for her father. Where had they gone? Why had they left her in such a horrific place?

When she thought of Odaku the rage returned, pushing its way out of her chest. She scratched at the tree bark and shredded leaves to vent her frustration and to keep herself from sobbing and screaming. She didn't feel the slightest bit of pity for the humans in Kagainsen. She felt no guilt for losing control. In fact she held onto the pressure of the rage inside her and thought: _I am strong like Father. I will be strong like Father from now on…_

And then she remembered that she had lost her white stone where she had fallen asleep beside the little river. Saya let the tears come then, though she forced herself to stay silent. She had to go back in the nighttime for the stone. She couldn't leave it behind—it was her only physical tie to her mother, to the life she had lived knowing love and peace and family.

She laid her cheek to the rough tree bark. "Momma," she sniffled, "Momma where did you go? Why did you leave me?"

* * *

A/N: I'll give you one guess who Miyazi was talking about. Oh and btw Miyazi made a brief appearance in _Innocence_ in chapter 6.

And next time:

_"What are they?" Rin yelled. "Why are they here?" Her eyes widened another fraction when a new thought reached her. "Are you sending me back? Is that what this is?"_

_"That time draws near, yes," Kokoro said, nodding. "But these are the souls of inuyoukai. Rulers of the Middle and Western Lands that have passed on, each representing a clan or living relative. Four of them, and all must be appeased."_


	13. A Gift From The Dead

A/N: I filled out this freelance writer application thing for this website and they took me! I get paid something like a bit over 3 dollars for every 1,000 pageviews. Sounds icky but hey, it's publishing credit...maybe? And I get to write about crap like Indricothere, the Jacobson's organ, the 1 of us that are immune to AIDS and I don't know, the four C's (or was it six?) or technical writing. Anyway...ten articles every three months or something. I have a fear of contracts so I haven't signed it just yet. Whenever I see one I always wonder if I'm selling my soul. Wish me luck!

Disclaimer: I do not own them.

Last Chapter: Rin wandered through the mist shrouded realm of the dead. She met Kokoro. Saya endured a whole lot. She escaped Yamaiko and ran away to the forest. Yamaiko encountered a trader from inland named Miyazi who promised for a fee to get some slayers to come in and deal with the beast named Saya. Saya began to work out how to survive by stealing from the humans, but she isn't very good at it. A boy named Odaku caught her and tried to rape her. Saya killed him but lost her white stone.

* * *

**A Gift From the Dead**

"What am I doing here?" Rin asked, staring blankly at the gray ghost of the monk before her.

"_You are seeking answers, of course. I am here to give them to you. I am an emissary between this world and the next. When the time comes it will be me that sends you back to the land of the living." _Kokoro stepped back from the door and gestured forRin to come inside. His feet made no sound as they moved over the floorboards.

As Rin stepped into the room she felt her body growing heavier. Fatigue weighed her down and she began to feel hunger stir in her gut. She walked into the middle of the room, following Kokoro, rubbing her palms over her belly, feeling the bulge there. Was it growing?

Kokoro sat down. The motion startled Rin, making her look up and take stock of the room more thoroughly. The light came from several lamps scattered about the corners of the room. Some were covered by yellow paper, others by orange, giving the room a brightly colored, warm texture. The room was infused with color, as if the lamps had burned away the endless grayness of the mists. The floorboards were burgundy in color; the screens were rich, lavish gold with brown and blue ink paintings covering them.

"Come, Lady Rin. Sit."

When Rin looked to Kokoro she opened her mouth in shock. The spirit of the monk was colored as well. His face was pale but his hands were darkened, tanned by sun exposure. His head was shaven, but his eyebrows revealed black hair. "What is this place?" Rin demanded, ignoring his order for her to sit. "What's happening here?"

"This room is a portal between the worlds, Lady Rin. You have noticed the bright colors. Color is a trait of reality. The dead have no use for it—well, _human_ spirits have no use for it. The realm that you just arrived from was a place where the souls of dead humans wander before reincarnation or when they have not yet accepted their death and fight the natural order." He chuckled, actually smiling. "Of course it occasionally ensnares the living such as yourself as well."

"You said you would send me back," Rin breathed, as if speaking louder would change Kokoro's mind.

"Yes, I will," Kokoro replied. "When the time is right."

"Why not now?" Rin demanded, quietly.

"Because you must be educated first, my lady, and because we have not reached an agreement yet." Kokoro patted the floor at his side. "Come, sit at my side. I must speak with you before they arrive. Inuyoukai are impatient creatures."

"Inuyoukai?" Rin repeated, frowning with confusion.

Kokoro didn't answer her. Instead the monk tapped the floor at his side once more. "Come Lady Rin, sit down at my side and I will tell you the goddess's plan. There is no one living currently that understands it as I do."

Cautiously, Rin settled next to the monk, knee to knee with him, listening.

"Much of this you may have known, but you did not know of how they were interconnected. I will start at the beginning of course. Koeru and Jishin are the same goddess, but the two names reveal her different powers. Koeru creates life, Jishin takes it away. She told you that she is worshipped in the north. That was the truth. Koeru is worshipped there by humans and demons alike. Some years ago Lady Rin, you left Lord Sesshomaru and your mate naturally searched for you in the Middle Lands because he suspected that young Shimofuri was responsible for your departure. In his grief, Sesshomaru killed a young lord named Arasoizuki who represented the northern clan in the Middle Lands. Arasoizuki's wife Lady Yamome and their son Boroya survived Sesshomaru's attack and returned to the north. After your daughter was born an arranged marriage was proposed between Shimofuri and the widow Yamome."

Rin interrupted him saying, "But Shimofuri isn't married to her…"

Kokoro nodded at her, agreeing. "Lady Yamome had no desire to marry Shimofuri. She wanted her son to hold his father's land, but she wanted to see your mate punished and an alliance with Shimofuri would only allow Lord Sesshomaru to escape unscathed. Lady Yamome prayed to Koeru, the goddess of the north, the female's universal patron goddess. Koeru interceded for Yamome and designed a plot to punish Sesshomaru. She approached Shimofuri and asked him to join her first," Kokoro stopped and smiled, almost grinning with pride. "But Lord Shimofuri dismissed her without hearing her out. Koeru became angry then and crossed the line. She sought out a prominent lord of the northern clan and tempted him with power. When he agreed she went back to the Middle Lands and convinced Lord Sasugainu to work with her instead of Shimofuri. Her plans had changed into a wider net of hatred—Jishin no longer wishes to punish Sesshomaru, she wishes to strike back at all of the Middle and Western Lands."

Rin shook her head. "Why?"

"She is angry that Lord Shimofuri turned her away, but mostly it is because she serves only herself in the end. And in her case serving _the north_ is serving herself. Jishin's entire plan ends by benefitting the north."

"How does lying to me and trapping me here benefit the northern clan?" Rin asked, baffled.

"Jishin has deluded Sasugainu into slowly killing off all of his family," Kokoro explained, leaning closer and lowering his voice. "He was angry with his wife and Jishin convinced him that if he allowed her to kill his wife she would provide him with another and make certain that he was blessed with a son. To further entice him, she promised that she would deliver not just any inuyoukai woman, but _Sesshomaru's wife._"

Rin was silent, her lips and her jaw pinched tightly.

"Jishin also convinced Sasugainu into believing that Shimofuri was unworthy of rule and would not be strong enough to trust with his secret alliance with her. To keep Shimofuri distracted and to write him out of inheriting the Middle Lands, Jishin suggested a marriage between Sasugainu's daughter Amagumori and Shimofuri. In the marriage negotiations she had Sasugainu put in a stipulation that, should Amagumori die suspiciously, Shimofuri would have his birthright taken from him and it would be passed onto Sasugainu and his heirs. She has taken hold of his daughters' souls—something that Sasugainu allowed her to do when he buried their mother's ashes after adding locks of their hair. It was a sacrifice to Jishin that allowed her complete control over his children, daughters that Sasugainu views as useless. When she feels the time is right, Jishin will kill Amagumori to condemn Shimofuri…"

* * *

_On the other side of reality, in the Nanka palace where Tsukiyume and Amagumori were sleeping in the same bed chambers within a few feet of one another, Jishin appeared. She materialized from the darkness, like water droplets coalescing into a small stream. She was transparent, intangible. A cruel smile warped her lips as she leaned forward over Amagumori's sleeping form. Her fingertips touched the inuyoukai woman's eyelids, hovering over them for a moment before she pressed inward. Her incorporeal fingers passed into Amagumori's head. _

_Amagumori shivered in her bed, despite the fact that she was snug and warm beneath her covers. _

"_Sleep well, Amagumori," Jishin whispered softly. "Sleep forever."_

* * *

Kokoro continued without stopping. "At about that same time Jishin approached you and promised to give you a pureblooded son. She delivered on her promise, but by accepting her offer Lady Rin, you allowed her complete control over you, body and soul. She has taken your body into the Northern Lands to claim the child that you will birth."

"Why does she want it so badly? Will she use the child to harm Sesshomaru?" Rin asked.

Kokoro shook his head slowly. "Jishin is only keeping the child, and she only created it, because she was forced to by Fate. Lord Sesshomaru was _destined_ to have a pureblooded child who is _destined_ to rule the Western Lands, but Jishin believes that she may destroy Sesshomaru prematurely and scatter the rulers of the Middle Lands to advance the northern clan. She plans to marry Lady Ginrei to Lord Kanseninu of the north, the inuyoukai that she truly serves. She will also use Hanone in a marriage between Arasoizuki and Yamome's son Boroya. Jishin and Kanseninu will march an army over the Middle Lands and kill Shimofuri and Tsukiyume—as well as Sesshomaru."

"And Sasugainu would allow that to happen?" Rin asked, disbelieving.

"Of course not," Kokoro replied. "Sasugainu would never allow that, but by the time it happens Sasugainu will be dead. Jishin plans to destroy all of the rulers and their families in the Middle and Western Lands. She will use Ginrei and Hanone, and she has used you to placate Fate. The northern clan would hold Sesshomaru's pureblooded heir and give him a small territory in the Western Lands when he was old enough, but Inutaisho's line would effectively have vanished. The northern clan might even claim your son and tell him that he was their own. He would grow to hate his own father and his ancestors, never knowing that he was hating himself."

"How could she kill Sesshomaru?" Rin asked, her voice was barely a whisper.

"She has given him a poison that is remaking him from the inside out as we speak. It is transforming him into a human being. While he is weak, Jishin will have him killed."

"Why are you telling me all this?" Rin asked, shaking her head.

Kokoro smiled at her. His brown eyes twinkled with amusement. "Because as soon as we have reached an agreement I will send you out of this realm and into reality. It will become your task to put a stop to Jishin's plot. I will try to help you of course, but my powers in reality are often limited…"

"How will I see you in reality?" Rin asked.

Now Kokoro's expression changed, becoming the traditional spirit melancholy. "You will find me in my daughter, Lady Tsukiyume."

Rin stared at him, taken aback. "You are Tsukiyume's father?"

"Yes, and so you see Lady Rin, I have every reason to help you succeed. If Jishin wins she will kill my daughter and she will kill young Shimofuri, who was once my former student many years ago." He looked away from her, laughing slightly. "I would hate to see either of them perish, and so I have used what little power I have to orchestrate this intervention. Jishin has defied the natural laws and we will stop her."

"But how do I fight a goddess?" Rin lifted her hands upward in a helpless gesture. "I can't lay a hand on her; I could never kill her…"

"You do not kill a goddess; you kill her believers, for they are the true source of her power. If you can kill Lord Kanseninu and Lady Yamome, Jishin's plot will fall apart. Without someone to serve, Jishin will lose her power." Kokoro shifted slightly, moving to sit directly at her side so that he was no longer facing her. "Now the time has come, Lady Rin. The agreement must be made…"

"What agreement?" Rin looked around the room and realized that the lamps were flickering. A wind moved across her cheeks, riffling her messy hair. At her side Kokoro closed his eyes and began to hum without answering her. Panic started its familiar flutter inside Rin's chest. "Kokoro? What's happening?"

The ground trembled slightly, vibrating. Rin's ears tingled and she put her hands over them. The _air_ was vibrating, not the ground…

Directly ahead of Rin the light changed, twisting. A tall, lanky shape appeared, shining brilliantly and colored a rich honeyed-gold. Before Rin had finished gawking at the first glowing shape, another appeared to her right. This one was a startling pink like cherry blossoms. It glowed, pulsing with energy and light.

"What is happening?" Rin shouted again, her eyes wide with terror. Other lights appeared, each pulsing a different color.

"It is a meeting of minds and of souls, Lady Rin," Kokoro told her. He didn't appear surprised in the least as more of the long, glowing orbs appeared in a close circle around them.

"What are they?" Rin yelled. "Why are they here?" Her eyes widened another fraction when a new thought reached her. "Are you sending me back? Is that what this is?"

"That time draws near, yes," Kokoro said, nodding. "But these are the souls of inuyoukai. Rulers of the Middle and Western Lands that have passed on, each representing a clan or living relative. Four of them, and all must be appeased."

Kokoro lifted one hand and pointed around the circle. Directly in front of Rin was the sphere of golden light. Kokoro named it: "Inutaisho."

To Rin's right was the pink shape, Kokoro's voice was choked as he named it: "Taikokajin."

Kokoro twisted around to look behind them and Rin followed his movement. Behind them was an elongated, shimmering sphere of green light. "Arasoizuk," Kokoro said.

At last to their left the fourth light hovered and glowed a light gray-blue. Kokoro pointed his finger at it and said, "Nishiyori."

"What agreement must be reached?" Rin asked, looking around her at the lights. She ducked her head low, intimidated by the tall, proud souls of the creatures that once could've crushed her under their paws. Her eyes fell on the golden sphere and she felt certain that it had not placed itself there, directly in front of her by chance. It was Inutaisho, watching over her protectively with Sesshomaru's same golden eyes.

The thought of golden eyes propelled Rin's mind into an entirely different direction. She reached for Kokoro, calling to him. "Where is Saya? You can't send me back without telling me about her. What did Jishin do with my daughter?"

Her hands passed through Kokoro's body. With a start Rin realized that Kokoro's spirit had lost its color. The clarity of his form had diminished as well. "Kokoro—what—"

"_I am sending you back to reality now. Seek out my daughter and I will tell you of the agreement that we will make here."_ Kokoro's melancholy smile traced its way over his lips and Rin felt her body grow impossibly heavy. Her shoulders sagged and she started to fall backward.

"No," she fought the heaviness, reaching out for Kokoro and then, in a last ditch effort, toward Inutaisho's golden light. Her hands passed through both, feeling nothing but a cold chill. "Please—where is Saya?"

A deep voice boomed through the room, rich and powerful. It had no distinguishable origin, but Rin knew like a dreamer that the speaker was Inutaisho. _"You're child will be protected by Inuyasha."_

Rin's body relaxed. She drew in a deep breath to try and answer the golden light but her head spun, the colors of the spheres danced and swirled. Rin fell backward. The back of her head stung with the impact, a surprisingly real sensation. The lights swarmed above her, flowing in, drawing closer until Rin felt their cold radiating on her face. It took all of her energy to open her lips and speak one word, "What…?"

Kokoro's voice answered her, fading and growing quieter. _"This is our last gift to you Lady Rin. It is your destiny, your rebirth. When you wake Jishin's abomination will be flushed out of you and your new life will begin. Good luck Lady Rin…"_

The lights above her head suddenly glowed hot. Their color swirled into one, becoming a bright, powerful white. They fell on her as one and darkness closed over her, deep as an ocean.

* * *

After two days of slow, agonizing travel, the illness at last reached Sesshomaru's gastro-intestinal tract, stopping his journey in its entirety. His gut convulsed with pain while his stomach called for food continuously. As a grown youkai eating had been something he did by choice, not out of need. Now he suffered weakness in his limbs, a shaking in his hands and legs as his blood sugar plummeted. Along with that weakness and the pain of his illness, his mind grew slow and cloudy.

(A/N: my dad is a diabetic and some of his pills stimulate overproduction of insulin and that sucks the sugar out of his bloodstream fast meaning that sometimes he gets shaky and "stupid." My dad is usually clear-spoken and quick-thinking, but once when his sugar was low I watched him slur and shake and lose his sentences, it was actually pretty dramatic. After he'd eaten a little bit of salad he started to get better and smacked himself in the head saying that he'd been so impaired mentally that he hadn't thought to open the packs of sugar they had at the restaurant right there on the table. Just a little on his tongue and wham! He would've been better. So the power of blood sugar on the brain…wow…sorry for my longish note.)

At the first waves of the startling, limb-weakening hunger, Sesshomaru ordered Jaken to stop. On foolish pretense, for the sake of his pride, Sesshomaru said that he was having a look around. Of course, if that had been the truth, Jaken knew that his lord would never make a point of explaining it to him. In the woods Sesshomaru at first searched for an animal that he could catch, kill, and eat, but when nausea bloomed inside his stomach and he dry-heaved, spitting onto the leaf-litter at his feet, Sesshomaru realized that he couldn't wait.

He would have to eat _plants._

He knelt and picked through leaves. Although he brought the leaves to his nose and sniffed at them, trying to discern whether they were good to eat or poisonous, it did little good. Sesshomaru's nose was useless, dulled to the point that he could no longer smell water on the breeze, the scent of an enemy or of an animal. Even the scent of the forest had dimmed. If he wished to scent it at all he had to bring his nose close to the plants and inhale deeply.

A few berries eased his weakness and shaking, but increased the cramping in his intestines. That discomfort made Sesshomaru abandon his quest for food. He rejoined Jaken, planning to continue his journey, but his innards rebelled before he could issue the order. He sat with his back to Jaken and hacked, spitting on the ground as he fought to keep the little that he'd eaten inside him rather than tossed over the grass and dirt.

Jaken, to his credit, stayed silent, whimpering and mumbling to himself while he shivered with a sort of sympathy nausea. By scent Jaken knew that his lord was famished, starving. He could smell Sesshomaru's changing scent. It was no longer that of an inuyoukai, it was tarnished with the stink of human. It was not the scent of a hanyou, which was a natural odor because the creature was a result of breeding, a hybrid of two species. Instead the scent that had risen to cover Sesshomaru was one of an unnatural change, like a dark magic.

At last Jaken's anxiety grew strong enough that he was forced to give voice to his concerns. "My lord?"

Sesshomaru had grown silent between bouts of cramping pain and pangs of unnatural hunger. He sat with his eyes closed against the sunlight that flowed in from above. His thoughts were focused on ignoring his embarrassing illness and pain. At least the pain in his bones had diminished…

Jaken's voice came to him high and tinny, an irritant. He started to growl but the vibrations from his chest and throat ignited the wrath of his intestines and stomach again. He doubled over, gritting his teeth, forcing himself to stay silent.

"Please my lord," Jaken went on when Sesshomaru failed to acknowledge him. "Perhaps we should turn back to Shimofuri and his lady. You are ill! You mustn't risk yourself—"

"No," Sesshomaru grunted. He picked fastidiously at his lips, reaching one clawed finger into his mouth to try and wipe away the foul taste of his stomach acids. As his claw moved over his canine teeth, Sesshomaru felt a short, sharp burst of pain. Blood spurted into his mouth.

_One of his fangs had broken._

Sesshomaru's hands shook, his breathing jerked with shock. A thought skittered through his mind before he could stop it: _I am dying. The hanyou girl lied. _

"Please Lord Sesshomaru," Jaken whimpered, starting to cry in snorted, whining sobs. He grabbed the back of Sesshomaru's haori and tugged like a needy child. His little grubby hands pulled just slightly on Sesshomaru's brilliant white hair and the strands fell free, falling like leaves from the trees in the fall.

Jaken jumped back, gasping and crying out with fresh alarm and terror. He stared down at his three-clawed hands, gaping. "Oh no! No! How can this be happening?"

Sesshomaru did not have the energy to turn and see what the toad was sobbing about now. He poked at his broken fang and then moved his tongue about the rest of his mouth, pushing on each sharp molar and every tooth in between. His carnassials were weak and wiggled in his jaw, ready to fail. (A/N: Carnassials in case you didn't know are the shearing molars in dogs and cats.) Pressing his claws against his thigh revealed that they too were weakening. How could he survive without his powers, his teeth, and his claws?

"Oh, Lord Sesshomaru," Jaken was weeping, his voice trembling. "I will search for something for you to eat. Just wait here…I will find something…" he turned and rushed off, waving his staff.

Sesshomaru did not have the presence of mind or the strength to demand that the toad stop. He sat still, testing his claws and teeth one by one, obsessively.

* * *

(A/N: to break some of the tension perhaps…)

Today Inuyasha was hunter and his children were the prey. The goal in their game of cat and mouse was simple: don't let the hunter win. It wasn't a game that they played with shrieks of laughter and giggling. It was a serious game, performed in silence, a competition of wits—a rehearsal for potential disaster.

Koinu understood this implicitly. He was nine, nearly ten years old, still short and caught very literally in his father's shadow, but he had already ventured out into the world with Sango and Miroku and their children, training alongside them under Inuyasha's tutelage. He had seen slobbering youkai, mindless with a primeval hunger and rage. He had heard the ones that could speak taunt his father and the humans, calling the slayers weak because they were mortal and ridiculing Inuyasha because he was hanyou.

Koinu understood that he needed to be prepared for trouble if it came his way—but his younger sister Akisame did not.

"It's been half an hour," Akisame whined. "Dad's at home laughing at us."

"No." Koinu shook his head. He peered out of their little burrow, a tree whose withered roots covered a hollow that fit the siblings snugly inside amongst the spiders and earthworms and mosquitoes. "Dad never loses this game. He's still out there."

"So what if he finds us? He'll whine and bitch at us for a while and then we'll all go hunt something together and he'll get over it." Akisame picked at the dirt beside her bare feet where a spider the size of a peanut was squirming, frantically trying to get away.

"Bitch at us?" Koinu repeated, confused. "Where did you hear that?" He caught sight of the spider and made a face. "Don't eat that, Aki."

"Why not?" she grumbled. "I'm bored enough to do it—besides, they crunch nice."

"Mom says you shouldn't eat things outside in the dirt. It will give you worms."

"When was the last time a worm hurt you, Koinu?" Akisame asked, unimpressed. "Mom says a lot of stupid stuff like that. Worms eat dirt, not people and not youkai. What's to be scared of?"

Koinu elbowed her, growing irritable. "Not _earth_worms. She means a parasite, like a tick but inside you."

"Ticks crunch nice too," Akisame sniggered, grinning. Her fangs were bright in the dimness of their hollow. "And I'm fucking bored."

"Don't talk like that—don't talk at all. Father will hear and we'll lose the game…"

"We always lose," Akisame said, pouting. "What's the point of—"

Koinu elbowed her again, making a short hissing sound to silence her. "Did you hear that?" he whispered.

Akisame cocked her head, listening. Her golden eyes, the same shade as Inuyasha's, opened wide. She mouthed a single word at him, "Dad."

Her brother nodded at her and huddled closer to her, wrapping one arm over her. Akisame pushed at it, frowning at his overprotective gesture. The sound and slight vibrations in the ground carried on above them, through the slope of the hillside. A small sniffing sound reached them, echoing through the trees. The wind rustled through the leaves and branches, making a sound that mimicked the noise of a rushing river. The breeze angled into Koinu and Akisame's hollow, allowing them to take in the scents borne on it—but their pursuer had chosen to approach them from behind, moving into the wind, like a predator.

The sniffing sound came again, closer. The vibrations grew stronger, coming right over Koinu's head. As his ears moved they brushed the top of their hollow, disturbing old cobwebs and hairy plant roots.

The rules of the game went that the hunter had several hours to find them. If an entire afternoon passed and the hunter was unsuccessful, then the prey won and the hunter lost. But, if the prey were found before the afternoon had passed they had one last chance to win by escaping, though with Inuyasha the chance of eluding him was unlikely. There were strategies that Koinu had picked out when he'd played the game alone with his father or Shippo. He had to move between hiding spots and travel between the ground and the trees to spread out his scent to make it harder to track. The combination of lost or meandering scents, as well as the changing of hiding spaces often assured Koinu of a win. While playing with Akisame, however, Koinu refused to leave her to find her own hiding spot and he didn't like to change spots because their combined scent moving together was too easy to follow. The only way to beat Inuyasha in the game when Akisame was with him was to roll in dung to hide their scents—a tactic that neither sibling liked.

Now Inuyasha was closing in. They would have to make a break for it. Escape with Akisame was a bit better than hiding with her. Koinu had worked out an elaborate running and leaping pattern for them both to follow, splitting up and then rejoining on the road. Splitting up while Inuyasha—or a real enemy—pursued them increased the chance of escape for it frustrated the attacker. As for their father—Inuyasha would get upset the moment he saw his children parted and yell for the game to end. Koinu considered that ending an annoying draw. But it was more satisfying than a loss.

"Go," Koinu whispered. He prodded Akisame with one hand, shoving her toward the tree roots and the light of the day beyond. "Run like we planned. Meet on the road."

Akisame collided with the tree roots and tumbled clumsily, her foot caught on one of them. She cried out in alarm. Her black hair flew out around her wildly as she fell.

Koinu leapt after her, reaching with his clawed hands for her caught ankle. He saw Akisame's struggling, the increasing desperation in her face. Koinu slashed the roots holding his sister down and she jumped away, rushing into the forest and then disappearing into the trees.

Curiosity slowed Koinu, forcing him to turn and gage the distance between himself and his pursuer—it was a mistake. Inuyasha was on him with the flash of red and the billowing sound of his Fire Rat haori. He effortlessly pinned Koinu's hands to his sides and then leaned forward, pushing his son to the dirt. Koinu frowned and sighed, defeated.

"You lose today, Pup," Inuyasha said. His tone told Koinu that there was a _but_ in the upcoming sentence, a bit of good news. "You helped Aki. That was the right thing to do." Inuyasha rose to his feet and pulled Koinu up with him. He dusted his stunned son off, brushing down his white hair and ears, patting his green haori and hakama. "Let's go get Aki back."

As it turned out, Aki had already reached the road, spilling onto it uncontrollably, like ice cubes sliding over a smooth floor. She landed on all fours, her hair flying wild and messy around her. Her first few breaths told her that the movement further down the road was not her older brother, but rather it was a stranger. Immediately Akisame raced to the opposite side of the road and crouched amongst the weeds, waiting for the stranger to come into sight. She knew by scent that it was a man, one of the villagers.

A grasshopper jumped beneath her, smacking into Akisame's bare knee. Frowning, she looked down at it and laid both hands over the pesky insect. Grinning, she brought the little beast up to her face and popped it into her mouth.

The man appeared, rounding the corner and gradually ascending the hill. He wore a sunhat and peasant pants. Akisame could hear him puffing on the air from a hundred feet away. She grinned and leapt up and forward, sprinting toward him and growling.

The man lifted his head and his mouth fell open, startled. A little girl had raced toward him growling like a guard dog. Her black hair flew up and around her face; her legs were smeared by dirt and browned by dust. Her face was young and tender, her features even and dainty, one day she would be beautiful. Her legs were long for her age, gangly and clumsy. She was barefoot and wearing a short, boyish kimono with dirty and torn leggings. And her teeth were _sharp._

"Get away from me!" Miyazi shouted, stumbling backwards.

"Who are you?" Akisame demanded, growling in her high voice. "What do you want here?"

"I'm walking on this road!" Miyazi recognized her golden eyes and the features of her face. The golden eyes were Inuyasha's, and her facial features were Kagome's. Miyazi had dealt with both of her parents. Inuyasha had always rubbed him the wrong way, but Kagome had been a pleasant girl that he respected and liked. Their daughter he'd only seen from time to time but her features made her unmistakable. "You're Inuyasha's girl?" he grunted the question at her.

"Yeah, I am." Akisame stopped growling and stood up straight. She beamed, grinning with pride. "Who are you?"

"I've come to talk to the slayers that are staying with you," Miyazi said. "I have a job for them."

Akisame frowned. "They're having babies."

Miyazi stopped, confused. "What?"

"Go away," Akisame told him. She turned her back to him and started to leap away. She didn't get far before Koinu and Inuyasha barreled out of the trees on the side of the road and tackled her. Inuyasha ran at her, stooped and bent over. He scooped her up onto his shoulder while letting out a mock roaring. Koinu followed behind, catching her flailing arms and tickling her sides.

Miyazi watched the three of them in their screaming, shrieking, and giggling. He slowly shook his head and grunted. "I'm glad I never had any kids."

Inuyasha turned and saw the trader while he still held his struggling daughter on his shoulder. His ears laid flat over his head in caution. "Yo! Miyazi," he called, recognizing the trader by scent. "What are you doing here?"

"I have come with a job for the demon slayers that are staying with you. There's a demon terrorizing a village by the coast."

Inuyasha lowered Akisame to the ground with a grunt and grinned, showing every one of his teeth at the trader. "It's about damn time something happened!" He gestured ahead, encouraging Miyazi. "Come on, hurry up. Let's hear about this demon terrorizing the coast."

Miyazi met with a weary, tense Miroku about twenty minutes later after Kagome had welcomed him inside and served tea and Inuyasha had scattered the multitude of children and teens, banishing them outside. Miyazi only recognized two of the brood as being Inuyasha's children, though there was another he recognized, a tawny-haired and fluffy-tailed fox child as belonging to the couple. The others were all strapping young men and boys. The oldest of them resisted Inuyasha when the hanyou tried to banish him to "go and play outside." That boy—Kohimu—eyed Miyazi and Miroku curiously, with a sort of longing. He was a teenager, almost by rights a man but he obeyed Inuyasha and followed the wild brood outside.

Miroku caught his attention quickly. "Mr. Miyazi, my wife is near her time. I cannot afford to be gone on a long and dangerous mission."

The trader nodded. He had lost his wife to childbirth two decades ago and although he had not been in the same room with her while she labored, he had heard her screams ring throughout his home and even outside in the village streets. He understood Miroku's position quickly. "The journey is less than a day from here if you hurry. The village is called Kagainsen and from the sounds of it they have a little kitsune infestation. The local Shinto priest, a Mr. Yamaiko, sent me to ask for your help."

"A kitsune?" Miroku asked.

"Mr. Yamaiko called the creature a shape-shifter. He tried to kill the demon but it changed its form and became identical to a child. That sounded like a fox to me. One little fox by the sound of it. A white fox. Mean anything to you?" Miyazi touched his fingers lightly to the cup that Kagome had served him, aware that she was somewhere behind him, listening. There was no sign of the monk's heavily pregnant wife or of Inuyasha.

Miroku reclined slightly in his seat, as if losing interest in Miyazi's story. He bit his lip and thought for a moment before speaking. "It does indeed sound like something a kitsune would try to do. They often live off human settlements like vermin if they aren't completely wild or friendly like our own Shippo. A white fox." He stroked his chin though there was no beard and his violet-blue eyes flicked to Kagome standing behind Miyazi. "A lack of pigmentation in a wild kitsune is not unheard of and it would make the creature easy prey for other youkai. It would make sense for this one to latch onto humans. Tell me, Mr. Miyazi, has the kitsune killed anyone? Did it _appear_ as a child, or did it possess one of the children?"

Miyazi knew by the tightness around Miroku's lips and eyes that his response was very important. Whatever Miyazi said next would determine whether the monk took the assignment or not. He knew little of demons and the like, but he could guess that Miroku was searching for a quick-fix assignment. He had to guess—because what he'd heard from Yamaiko was rather vague—which was easier for the monk: a youkai that possessed a child or a youkai that disguised itself as a child.

"It has not killed anyone. The last I heard of it the demon was raiding food supplies. As far as I know it cannot possess the village children. It masquerades as a child but as an unfamiliar one." Miyazi settled on telling the truth. He kept his face open and honest, trying to appear as though the plight of the villagers in Kagainsen _really_ mattered to him.

Miroku sighed and closed his eyes. "It is very close by. My wife will likely wait several more days before the child comes." He laughed lightly, "She is sick of me hovering over her anyway I suppose. I know Inuyasha wants me to go."

"Miroku!" Kagome chastised the monk from behind Miyazi. "Inuyasha doesn't want to see you go…"

Miroku laughed, smiling widely now. "Oh yes he does, Kagome. I'm sure you've noticed, Inuyasha is very claustrophobic and I have five children—nearly six." He turned back to Miyazi with a look that signaled a return to business. "I will make the journey to Kagainsen tomorrow morning, Mr. Miyazi. I suspect that for your services as a messenger you will require some portion of our pay…"

Miyazi grinned, but tried to keep the fullness of his satisfaction out of the expression to appear humble. "Oh good monk, you are too kind…"

* * *

"_She left with my daughter—and you allowed it?" Sasugainu raged, growling at the shadows. _

_Jishin was seated in the corner of his bedchamber, brooding and silent while Sasugainu threw his quiet, bitter temper tantrum. _

"_Didn't you tell me that burying Hokinsha's ashes with their hair inside would give you control over them?"_

"_I did," Jishin responded in a smooth, purring voice. _

"_Then you could've stopped her! Why did you let Soeki and Ginrei leave? They are vital to our plan or have you forgotten?"_

"_I haven't forgotten." Jishin twirled a lock of her fiery red hair between her middle and index fingers, admiring the glowand shine in the strand, like coals in the fire pit. "I allowed Soeki to escape because I sensed Lady Ginrei's distrust. She must come to you now on her own, Sasugainu. And she will because your daughter will kill Sesshomaru in front of her."_

_The inuyoukai lord stopped, staring through the wall as his mind whirled and accelerated out of rage and wrath into admiration for the brilliant goddess. "Yes, I see. She will at last see that her only choice is to accept my offer now. She will come back and give herself and Sesshomaru's daughter to me…"_

"_Yes," Jishin purred. "And you will have finally won your wife and I will give you a son as soon as possible." She curtailed her smile, hiding its sinister nature behind her closed lips. What she told Sasugainu was the truth, but there was yet another reason why she'd allowed Soeki to lead Ginrei and Hanone out of the castle._

_She knew that Soeki was heading toward the Nanka province where Shimofuri resided. She would have Soeki slaughter the unsuspecting Shimofuri in his sleep and then the hanyou girl Tsukiyume as well. Then, at long last, she would have Soeki move to Sesshomaru wherever he was, fighting his illness and transforming slowly in the wilderness. Although Sasugainu wanted Sesshomaru dead, he wasn't keen on seeing his nephew and niece die. He cared less for his own daughters as a matter of fact because he viewed them as Hokinsha's spawn. Shimofuri and Tsukiyume were his precious older sister's children though, closer to him in his mind than his own daughters. _

_With all of them dead the path for an invasion from the north was set and—she stared at Sasugainu's profile for a moment and allowed her hatred to spill over her face—she could finally kill Sasugainu as well, again using his own daughter. Victory was a sweet taste in her mouth, anticipation…_

* * *


	14. Not A Fox

A/N: I caution everyone. When I wrote this I was a little distracted. It is probably by far not my best work. I've been up to my neck with dog crap, cat food, dog food, and everything else. I keep ridiculous hours (like it's 2:15 right now and I've been regularly going to bed at about 8 AM) and I sit in a chair all day while I wait for my family to come back from CA and wish that I'd gone. It also didn't help that for several days now both my dogs have been trying to hump each other and crying incessantly (they're males, bunch of homos). Oh and I am writing articles for a website. I have four published right now. Yippety skippety.

Disclaimer: I do not own them (but Saya is mine I say! Back! jk)

Last Chapter: Kokoro explained Jishin's plot to Rin. He sent her back to the world of the living after she had seen a brief glimpse of the inuyoukai spirits. Sesshomaru is getting sicker and sicker by the minute. Miyazi the trader came to visit Inuyasha and Miroku who is staying with him waiting for Sango to have their sixth child. He told them there's a white kitsune they need to kill in the village of Kagainsen.

* * *

**Not A Fox**

It was a dim, gray day when Soeki and Ginrei reached Shimofuri's castle in the Nanka province. A slow, cool drizzle poured from the sky. Ginrei sheltered Hanone in her robe and cuddled her close with both arms. They were admitted into the castle, dripping wet and lightly shivering.

The mood of the castle was somber. The cousin and sister-in-law to Lord Shimofuri had arrived but the lord was not present to meet with her or the guest that she had secreted away from Sasugainu. Instead they sat in the audience room and waited together, murmuring quietly as servants begged their pardon and served tea and then bits of raw fish when they spotted Hanone. A young inuyoukai child, after being weaned, ate a great deal of protein. Ginrei thanked them for their observance and soon consumed her time with tearing and teasing apart bits of the fish strips and coaxing Hanone into eating them.

Soeki, sitting about five feet to Ginrei's left, fidgeted with anxiety. "Lord Shimofuri isn't here but my sister is—I mean I can't imagine where she would go…" Soeoki fell silent and glanced around the room, picking out the spots where servants and guards waited behind tiny screen doors, waiting to be called upon. She wondered if they had answers for her questions and almost called out to them. She shook her head. "Something isn't right here…"

"You're shaking," Ginrei observed, her tone was one of worry.

"Something's wrong here," Soeki repeated. Her hands quivered in her lap where they were clasped together, wringing the life out of one another.

Nearly thirty minutes passed before a door opened and Tsukiyume emerged to sit with them. The inuyoukai women bowed to one another. They didn't bother with traditional introductions as it was pointless. All of the women knew one another.

Seeing Taukiyume again for the first time in months alarmed Ginrei. The young hanyou girl was pale with a trace of dark circles left under her eyes by exhaustion. Her long black hair flowed down her back unrestrained and against her pale complexion it emphasized her seemingly transparent skin. Tsukiyume was ill or troubled—or perhaps both.

"I do apologize," Tsukiyume began, bowing a little in apology. "But Lord Shimofuri is not here to greet you currently. He has been out on an errand for a number of days now. If you would like to stay here in the Nanka I will gladly extend you all welcome in his stead. Lord Shimofuri would be honored I'm sure to share his home with you."

Soeki spoke up, demanding, "Where is my sister, Tsukiyume? Why are you out here greeting us alone?"

Tsukiyume's white ears fell flat against the black mat of her hair. "Lady Amagumori is sleeping. We have been unable to wake her." The hanyou swallowed thickly and averted her eyes from Soeki's.

"Sleeping?" Soeki whispered, her voice hissing. "And you can't _wake_ her?"

"No, I can't," Tsukiyume bowed, hiding her face with the motion. It did little good—Ginrei, Soeki and even little Hanone could all pick out the scent of her tears.

"Let me try—let me see her. I'm her little sister!" Soeki was on her feet and stomping toward Tsukiyume before anyone could stop her. "Don't bother to escort me. I know my big sister's scent, I'll find her."

Soeki pushed her way through the halls like a linebacker, ramming through maids or guards that stood in her way. She knocked aside a scribe that was carrying scrolls and he screeched and cursed at her but Soeki passed by him without hearing a word of it.

Finally she reached a door that stood open. It was a guest room, smaller than what the Lady of the House should've been given. Across the room a window was open, allowing warm, sweet-smelling summer air to waft in along with the golden bloom of sunshine. The light spilled across the lower half of the futon in the room. Soeki's eyes stayed on that shape, her older sister lying on her back to face the ceiling, sleeping. Amagumori's white hair was splayed over the pillow as if she had spent the night tossing and turning—but a sour smell—illness—lingered in the air.

"Big Sister," Soeki called. She stepped into the room and threw herself onto the futon beside her sister's prone form. She pushed at Amagumori's side, pulled on her hair like a bratty child. Amagumori made no move at all. Her chest rose and fell slowly, almost imperceptibly. Her eyes didn't move behind the closed lids.

"Soeki," a voice called out behind her. By scent Soeki recognized that Tsukiyume had followed her.

"What do you want?" she asked. Her voice was raspy and thick. She swallowed to try and regain control of it.

"I think this is Lord Sasugainu's doing…" Tsukiyume whispered.

Soeki closed her eyes and trembled with rage. "Of course our father did this! We're useless to him! He'll kill Big Sister because it gives him Shimofuri-cousin's land and power."

"Yes but how? Cousin, the cause of her sleep is bizarre…"

Soeki pushed herself away from Amagumori's bed and growled. Her shoulders hunched themselves with rage. "I'm going to visit my father and find out. Then I'm going to _kill him."_

Tsukiyume rushed forward and grabbed at her cousin's hand. "You mustn't do that! Please! If he can do this to Amagumori he can do this to you! You should stay here and let my brother help you when he returns. Besides—Sasugainu will come to us because you've brought Lady Ginrei and her daughter Hanone."

"If I wait he'll only kill my sister and move on to me. I'm leaving now." Soeki ripped her hand from Tsukiyume's and stormed past her, nearly bowling over the smaller hanyou girl. "Don't try to stop me," Soeki tossed the warning over her shoulder and then disappeared.

Alone in the room Tsukiyume glanced to Amagumori's pale form, sleeping soundly in the bed. On the night that the spell or illness had fallen on Amagumori, Tsukiyume had been sleeping at her side. When the morning light came Tsukiyume opened her eyes and woke, smiling at her sister-in-law, glad for the company after her grave illness brought on by the attempt that was made on her life. But Amagumori never moved or awoke. Tsukiyume had screamed at her sister-in-law, she had even bitten her arms below the covers and slapped her. Nothing worked.

Amagumori hadn't woken to eat, drink, or relieve herself. The longer she slept the more the scent of illness grew around her. Soon she would die without water. Tsukiyume had tried to force water down her throat but Amagumori had nearly drowned in it. What more could she do?

Tsukiyume got to her feet, sniffling faintly, and turned her back on the sleeping inuyoukai woman. She prayed that Soeki would succeed and save Amagumori, but in the meantime she would attend Ginrei and Hanone. It would be a good distraction. A needed distraction.

* * *

A sleek, dark shape slid through the underbrush on soundless paws. It was a large dog, larger than a Great Dane. It kept its nose to the ground and its mouth parted, inhaling the scents of the forest and those that had passed through it.

In one spot the dog slowed, sniffing loudly. The leaf litter was scuffed and the plants in the surrounding area had been disturbed, pruned by hungry hands. The dog came upon another spot a short distance away, hidden in the shadow of the forest canopy where a thick, acrid stink reached his nose. It was the scent of vomit and bile.

The dog lifted its head and peered around at the forest with his blue-gray eyes. He picked up speed, using his nose less now than his eyes, following scuff marks and the picked over plants around him. He changed course after nosing another acrid smelling pile of stomach acids, seemingly ignoring the obvious path that his quarry had taken in favor of making up his own.

He ran, loping in a circular trail, head up and sniffing furiously at the air.

At last he spotted a short shape moving about in the underbrush and snuffling loudly. His mouth fell open in a wolfish smile and he charged forward without bothering to muffle the sound of his approach.

The creature in the underbrush halted, falling silent as it listened. Then it made a squawking noise of alarm and fell backwards, crying to itself and shouting: "Lord Sesshomaru! Lord Sesshomaru! It's—"

The dog leapt over the imp's head and blocked his path. Jaken gaped up at him, his little triangular beak wide open to reveal his lizard-like tongue inside. In his three-clawed hands Jaken held bundled leaves that dripped water and blood. He half dropped, half tossed them into the dog's face. The bundled leaves unfolded revealing fish, berries, and a limp-legged, bleeding toad.

Jaken fell into a bow. "Please! Spare my master! He is unwell!"

The dog lowered his head and closed his eyes. His form grew misty and unclear, wavering as he transformed. The blue-gray fur lengthened and stretched out until he was nearly six feet tall. The image solidified into that of Shimofuri. The young inuyoukai looked down at Jaken with a stern, somber expression. "I haven't come to harm anyone."

Jaken's eyes filled at once with tears and he resumed his frantic bowing. "Oh thank you! Thank you Lord Shimofuri!"

Shimofuri nudged the leaves filled with food. "You plan to take these to Lord Sesshomaru?" He made certain to use the proper title when he spoke Sesshomaru's name to avoid alarming Jaken.

Jaken's crying had yet to cease. He whimpered and sniffed pathetically. "What have you come here for?" he demanded.

"I have been following you and Lord Sesshomaru for several days. I already know that my sister was right. Lord Sesshomaru's scent is changing constantly. He is becoming mortal. He is vulnerable. Jaken," Shimofuri stared the little toad directly in the eye, "Lord Sesshomaru must take shelter within the Nanka or he will die. You know this."

Jaken cried out again and bowed repeatedly, as if praying. "I know! You're right!" He shook his head helplessly and screeched with sorrow. "I have no power over my lord. He will never admit his weakness!"

"He can barely walk and he could never eat any of this and keep it down," Shimofuri said, pushing again at the berries, fish, and the dead toad that Jaken had collected.

"But—" Jaken stammered, crawling forward and clutching at the large, thick green leaves that he'd used as makeshift plates or bags to transport the food that he had gathered. "My lord would rather face death than accept the help of another. I have witnessed this myself on many different occasions…"

"Then I will wait until your lord is too ill to care. He faces more than death now, he faces mortality. I pity him." A sound caught Shimofuri's attention and he turned at the waist, listening and sniffing silently at the air. The scent that came to him was Sesshomaru's, but the unsteady tread was more typical of an old man than of a powerful demon lord.

"These are not your lands, Shimofuri," Sesshomaru reminded him. There was a long pause as Shimofuri casually turned to regard the older inuyoukai. Sesshomaru's skin was wet and pasty, discolored. His hair was unusually rough and disheveled. The markings on his cheeks and the crescent moon on his forehead had all begun to face and recede, like color leaching out of paper or the fading light of a sunset. Yet Sesshomaru's voice remained powerful and intimidating, even though it was raspier than usual.

"Leave," Sesshomaru growled.

"Lord Sesshomaru," Shimofuri bowed slightly, offering his respect. "Please, I ask you to reconsider my offer to house you while you are ill."

"Leave or I will kill you," Sesshomaru repeated, his golden eyes narrowing.

Shimofuri frowned briefly, allowing his face to be transformed by his irritation. "I hardly believe that you are well enough to toss out such threats. My offer was one made out of kindness…"

"Lord Sesshomaru!" Jaken cried. "Please reconsider Lord Shimofuri's offer!"

"No," Sesshomaru answered and then, without warning, he lurched forward with his clawed hands held high, ready to battle Shimofuri to the ground.

Jaken squealed with alarm and his crying began anew as he shouted, "No! Oh no my lord! Please! You are in no condition to—"

In a lunge, Sesshomaru was so swift that his feet and legs blurred. It was less that he ran and more that he used his own power to propel himself. Sesshomaru could create his own air current, like a jet engine. But with his illness the current stalled and stopped, leaving him to totter unsteadily, physically running the last five feet between himself and Jaken and Shimofuri. He drew Bakusaiga, anticipating that his weakened claws wouldn't harm Shimofuri. (A/N Yay! Guess who read some of the manga!)

Shimofuri reacted with speed that Sesshomaru, in his current weakness, lacked. He drew his own sword, Ribikou and stood firmly in Sesshomaru's path. They clashed blades in a blaze of energetic, sizzling light. Then Sesshomaru's legs began to tremble and he fell backwards. Bakusaiga smacked into the ground. It pulsed, Sesshomaru could see the blade shaking, but he could not _feel_ it.

His power was draining away. Bakusaiga would no longer react to him. Shimofuri could steal the powerful blade for his own…

The young inuyoukai lord stood over the fallen Sesshomaru with his sword held high but unmoving. "I do not wish to fight you. I've come to extend my aid," he said.

Sesshomaru pushed himself away from Shimofuri. Normally he would've leapt, but now all he could manage was a feeble scrabbling and hopping to gain distance and the motions brought agony to his muscles and jarred his joints and bones. He had never felt such bodily stress before. It set his hands shaking as he sheathed Bakusaiga, hoping to keep it from Shimofuri.

"I require no aid," Sesshomaru sneered. He meant the expression to be small and cold but his changing body had also affected his emotions. Anger spiked inside of him, hard to control and hot. The hatred that he allowed Shimofuri to see made the other inuyoukai stare at him and then smile slightly with surprise.

"I see that as you grow more human you resemble your younger brother remarkably," Shimofuri said, smirking.

Jaken made high pitched sniveling noises, pleading Sesshomaru and Shimofuri not to fight. Neither took heed of him though Sesshomaru did move his eyes to glare at the little imp.

"Insolence," Sesshomaru barked.

Shimofuri tensed noticeably, preparing to spring after Sesshomaru or perhaps to evade him. "If you had any sense at all, Lord Sesshomaru, you would see that I am not your enemy. If you wish to survive and save your land and your family, I would suggest that you cease this futile exercise and come back to the Nanka with me."

"Ridiculous," Sesshomaru intoned, his voice deep and growling with rage.

"In that case I will rescind my offer and give you something that you will understand better—you do not have a choice. You will be coming with me." Shimofuri turned Ribikou, readying it for the attack.

Sesshomaru flexed his clawed hands at his sides and curled his lips in a vicious, silent snarl. The rage that coursed through him was enough that his eyes darkened, trying to become red as he called unconsciously for his true form, for his power as an inuyoukai. It responded barely, giving the color to his eyes and making his claws glow faintly, but nothing else. The Dog inside was quiet; his true form was defeated and silent, drugged and dying.

He lunged for Shimofuri anyway, fearless and stubborn to the end.

Shimofuri rushed forward as well in a dark, blue-gray blur. He collided with Sesshomaru and Jaken screeched for his lord like a cheerleader whose football quarterback boyfriend has just been fatally tackled on the field.

The attack was over almost the moment it had begun. Shimofuri had met up with Sesshomaru, hitting him not with Ribikou, but with his elbow. Shimofuri had ducked low and smacked his sword arm and the point of his elbow into Sesshomaru's stomach. The move was unexpected and weak—it allowed Sesshomaru's clawed hands to meet up with Shimofuri's shoulders and even his neck. Blood spurted from wounds inflicted by Sesshomaru's claws. Tears raced up and down Shimofuri's clothing and sleeves and the collar of his kimono—but the wounds were tiny, minimal. It was like a cat had clawed him and Sesshomaru had paid a horrible price even to do that damage.

Sesshomaru stumbled backward, shaking and doubling over. He was caught between the excruciating pain in his gut from Shimofuri's blow and by the horror of seeing his fingertips bare and bleeding. In slashing at Shimofuri he had torn most of his claws clean off. Underneath, beyond the blood and abused bare flesh of his fingertips, Sesshomaru could see clear, weak human nails sprouting. They had grown in beneath his claws, pushing the claws off.

Horror was abruptly replaced with nausea and dizziness. Sesshomaru clutched at his stomach and fell to his knees. He vomited violently and felt shame pulsing inside him, competing with rage and fury. He was revealing his weakness to Shimofuri—and Shimofuri had forced him to do it.

As he sat still, shaking in the grass next to his vomit, Sesshomaru tried to breathe deeply, to recover whatever composure he had had before the blow to his gut. He peered up to watch Shimofuri just in time to see that the young inuyoukai lord had knelt at his side and had held his sword up high with the hilt down and directly above his forehead.

_No—!_

It was already too late. Shimofuri brought Ribikou's hilt down on his temple and blackness closed in around Sesshomaru.

* * *

On the night after Odaku's death, Saya found that the villagers of Kagainsen had posted sentries around their borders. They were armed with swords, altered fishing nets, spears, and long bows. They sprinkled salt around the edges of their village and Yamaiko prayed over every inch of it meticulously. As the sun set and the forest grew darker and darker, Saya watched them from just inside its shelter. Her golden eyes had acquired a keen feral glow—like a wild animal.

She was hungry, always hungry. She was thirsty as well. There were other sources of freshwater that she'd found—stagnant pools that caught rainwater in the rocks, or little cupped flowers that harbored sticky frog eggs, slimy tadpoles, or wriggling mosquito larvae. Saya drank these after some hesitation but the water disgusted her and made her stomach clench up unhappily. She did not get sick, but her human half had a natural aversion to such water sources. She craved the free flowing water of a stream or a river but found that she didn't have the courage to leave the edges of Kagainsen.

The guards and Yamaiko were vigilant. All night they patrolled and as soon as Saya thought she saw an opening in their patrols another man would appear with his weapon at the ready and his eyes pointed at the forest. Saya stayed crouched where she was amidst the ferns, the bushes, and the weeds, waiting.

Finally, in the deadest part of the night, one of the men patrolling the river slouched against the nearest hut and closed his eyes, dozing off. The other men wandered by once and a while but none of them bothered to wake the sleeper. They were dead on their feet as well and probably would've joined him.

Saya made her move. She had never known what she was capable of—even as a _four year old child—_while she simply played with her mother, Jaken, or her sister. With adrenaline and desperation to fuel her the wild animal inside Saya emerged from both halves of her heritage. A human was mortal, but with the threat of death they could become powerful forces to be reckoned with as well.

She leapt across the river—a stretch of ten feet—and scampered into the village, weaving her way on all fours through the huts. She reached the fish hut and squatted on the ground around it. The villagers had put in wood and metal slats with stones or pots of water to weigh them down and stop her from raiding it—but Saya was not a bear or a mouse or a raccoon. She pushed the boulders off the wood slats and knocked the pots over, spilling the salty water over the dirt. Saya slid the wood slats away from the fish hut, exposing the loose dirt of the hole she had dug the night before. It was an easy task then for her to root up the loose soil that the villagers had used to fill in her hole and shimmy inside the fish hut to gorge herself.

She ate fast, barely tasting the fish and salt and other seasonings as they slid down her dry throat. She was a furtive animal, a night-thief. When her stomach bulged with the fish she'd eaten, Saya slipped back out of her hole and pushed some of the dirt back into it. With a little work Saya replaced the wood slats but left the rocks and the empty water pots where they'd fallen. The sky was beginning to lighten, turning a rich blue-black as the earth turned her face slowly toward the sun again.

Saya moved slowly through the village huts, her ears straining to hear any warning sounds that someone might be after her. At the clearing that surrounded the water of the little river, in the smooth sand where Saya had saved herself from Odaku, she rifled through the sand with her clawed fingers, scratching and scrabbling as fast as she could. Every stone that met her hands she pulled up and examined. When she saw that not one of them was her smooth, white fox stone, Saya's breathing picked up, hitching with a little bit of panic and despair. The stone was her only physical tie to her family, to her precious past.

The scent of Odaku's blood on the sand made her whimper and hug herself, shaking. The red streaks in the sand had been scattered partially by the villagers in their attempt to cover up what they viewed as a horrific tragedy, but Saya was able to follow the markings by scent. She searched over this sand and at last found the fox stone. She cupped it in her palm, smooth like her father's hair, cold as ice and white like the moon.

"Aha!" A man's voice echoed from off the sand and the distant wall of the forest. Saya looked up and saw the man that had fallen asleep while leaning against the hut. He was armed with a long shafted spear. He hurled it at her and the pole curled through the air, slicing it with a hissing sound that sent chills racing through Saya's spine.

She stumbled backward as the spear stuck in the sand, splattering it up around her small body like water. The man shouted for help, calling her demon. Saya turned back to the forest and darted away on all fours like an animal. The villagers followed her into the darkness underneath the canopy but Saya lost them as soon as she climbed a tree. With their dull noses the humans tramped by beneath her, unaware as she looked down on them from above and clutched her white stone.

An emotion began to grow inside her as she watched them pass beneath her, unaware and stupid and filled with hate. She sensed their desire for vengeance and it made her hate them. they were different than her and she had once wished them no ill will, but they had chosen to hate her and hate bred more hate like wolf packs howling to each other through the night. Didn't they know that their boy had left Saya no choice? Didn't they know that Saya was just a little girl, lost and hungry and alone? Why hadn't the woman named Taki protected her?

She stared down at the white stone against her dirty palms and noticed that it was spattered with Odaku's blood. As Saya picked it clean she wondered where her mother and father were and let the tears fall onto the hateful villagers below her—they would think it was nothing but morning dew.

* * *

"Hey Dad, will they give us sake do you think? Will there be pretty girls?" Tisoki asked. He was a gangly young teen, gawky with a trace of freckles splashed over his cheeks.

"We don't have time to worry about that," Miroku answered, puffing.

They were climbing a steep hill, approaching the flat plain where the land at last gave way to the sea. Miroku was at the lead with his only daughter Kasai at his side. Just behind him were Tisoki and Kohimu, almost twins at barely a year apart. Tisoki was the younger and light-hearted of the two. Kohimu meanwhile was brooding and serious. The brothers were always paired, a well-oiled and coordinated unit. Kohimu had mastered a large bow with arrows that were thick and long, almost like spears. Tisoki used a sickle or spears occasionally. He was gifted with delicate movements of the wrist and arm. Had he been born and trained in Kagome's era he might've become a yo-yo champion.

"Will Mom be okay if it happens while I'm away…?" Kasai asked, peering worriedly at Miroku. Except for her freckles she was a miniaturized female version of her father. Like her brothers, Kasai was dressed in her black bodysuit. Her sword Burikko bounced at her small hip.

"If we hurry none of us will miss anything, sweetie." Miroku stopped and shielded his eyes from the sun with one hand, squinting into the distance. The sea wasn't far away but the path descending the hill that they had just scaled was fraught with curves and set at an ankle that made Miroku uncomfortable. Tisoki was clumsy and in his hurry, Miroku suspected that even he was likely to slip and fall. An injury to one of his children-turned-warriors was the last thing he needed while Sango waited back at Inuyasha's estate days, nearly ready to pop. _Six children…_

"Where is that Inuyasha?" Miroku grumbled.

Kasai lifted her hand to shield her eyes as well and followed her father's gaze. She was grinning fiercely. "I bet Uncle Inuyasha got bored of playing scout and made Koinu and Shippo play hunter."

"Hunter?" Miroku asked.

"Koinu told me that Uncle Inuyasha pretends to be a demon hunting him and Koinu only wins if he can get away."

"I doubt it," Miroku said, walking again. "Inuyasha would never be so irresponsible."

"Do you think the fox could've gotten them?" Kohimu asked from behind them.

"It's possible, but Shippo is with them. He will handle a fox, I'm sure of it."

They fell into silence for a time as they concentrated more fiercely on their footing on the increasingly steep descent. Then, midway down the path, they looked up and spotted a woman in an elaborate, thick winter kimono standing in the middle of the road. She twirled a lacquered umbrella in the sunlight and sang in a high, wavering voice like a cat screeching for tuna.

Kasai cringed at the sound while Miroku and his sons stopped to stare.

"Whoa," Tisoki laughed, "I think the kitsune found us!"

Miroku scoffed abruptly, dismissing it. "That's Shippo."

"I don't know," Kohimu murmured doubtfully. "Shippo isn't _that_ good of an imitator."

The woman in the road turned sharply, as if she'd heard Kohimu's words though if she'd been human the distance would've been too great. Her umbrella lowered and then, over the space of a single second, she vanished in a wisp of dust. Before the slayers could prepare themselves completely the woman had reappeared directly at Kohimu's side. The woman wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close. Her massive kimono sleeves dwarfed the teenager.

Kohimu called out, screeching with surprise at first but then his face colored brightly red as he heard Shippo's voice come out of the woman. "A poor imitator, huh? What is my tail still there? I don't see it! You're just being mean Kohimu!"

"Let go of me!" Kohimu pushed at the fox, grumbling. When Shippo refused the odd couple toppled over. The impact made Shippo lose control of his transformation and with a popping sound the kit returned to his normal boyish appearance. Kohimu got to his feet first and irritably brushed off his bodysuit and armor.

"Party pooper," Shippo complained. When the kit got to his feet he shook like a dog, sending the dust flying off him. His tawny, bushy tail fluffed out even more, like a scared cat's.

Inuyasha's voice came out of the trees from the left side of the road. "Cut it out Shippo."

Miroku turned and regarded the emerging father and son with relief. "Have you found anything yet, Inuyasha?"

"We smelled a village but we didn't go in and talk to anyone. Considering the three of us I thought it'd be better if we all showed up together." Inuyasha scowled out into the distance, irritated with the unfortunate truth of those words. If a white kitsune was terrorizing the villagers than how would they feel about a father and son pair of white-haired, white-eared slayers and a boy with the feet and bushy tail of a fox?

"Very wise," Miroku said, nodding in approval. "I take it that you didn't get a glimpse or catch a scent of the kitsune we're after…?"

Koinu answered him, shaking his head in the negative, "No, nothing yet."

"Well," Miroku sighed, tapping his staff against his shoulder in a motion of resignation. "We should hurry on ahead."

With Inuyasha's return Kasai fell back to walk beside Koinu and the hanyou took up the other primary position at Miroku's side. As he fell in line with the monk, Inuyasha nudged him in the ribs. "How much are you going to charge these people for our services? Hmm? Six barrels of fish or just their prettiest daughters?"

"I disapprove of your insinuation, Inuyasha," Miroku murmured, stuffily.

"The guy that asked for your help this time is a priest and _he_ couldn't get rid of this fox…"

"That is precisely why I'm going to ask for four barrels of fish, two of rice, and a barrel of kelp or crabs or maybe some squid…" Miroku rubbed his chin as he thought, contemplating his upcoming seafood-rich meals.

Inuyasha sighed, growling a little. "Remember monk, I get a cut of that."

* * *

They arrived in Kagainsen an hour later and immediately found themselves surrounded by armed villagers. Spear points jabbed at them and arrows were notched and aimed.

Miroku, who'd faced such greetings many times before while traveling with Inuyasha, fearlessly strode up to the nearest spear and lifted one palm up in a peaceful motion. "Please good sir, before you and your fine companions slay us, may we be allowed to introduce ourselves to you?"

The man holding the spear had his teeth and jaw clenched together but as Miroku spoke his expression slackened with surprise at the monk's eloquence. Slowly he and the others closest to him lowered their weapons as they became aware that the strangers, with their bizarre clothing and the fox boy and two white-eared apparitions, were actually a lot of humans—teens and a girl even.

"Uh," the man stammered. His spear lowered and several of the men and women around him followed suit, blinking as they registered the human demon slayers. "Who are you…?"

"Don't listen to them!" One man shouted out, jostling his way through the crowd to come to its edge where he could stare at the slayers. His eyes landed on Koinu and stayed there, narrowed with hatred. He lashed out with one finger, pointing violently. "The demon! The demon girl that killed Odaku! She looks _just like them!"_

Others chimed in and the villagers moved restlessly like spooked horses in a narrow carrel. "He's right! The demon does have white hair like those two!" "And that one! It has the same color eyes as the demon girl!" "Look at their faces! A resemblance!"

Inuyasha growled, his ears flattening as he lost his patience. "Look you morons, I sure as hell don't resemble any fox demon!"

Miroku had sighed, closing his eyes as he sensed impending disaster. "Please," he kept his voice calm and passive. "We have come to slay your fox demon. Please rest assured—the color similarity between my companions—Inuyasha and his son Koinu—is purely coincidental."

The man holding the spear directly in front of Miroku frowned and shook his head. "The others are right." He gestured at Inuyasha and Koinu with his spear. "They look like foxes to me."

Here Miroku laughed lightly, drawing the villagers' attention immediately.

"What's so funny?" the man that had first pointed out Inuyasha and Koinu to the crowd and stirred them up now scowled with rage at the idea that he was being laughed at.

"I'm afraid," Miroku began, "that you fine people are well-meaning but uneducated in this instance. Inuyasha and Koinu—my companions—are _not_ kitsune youkai. The little boy Shippo is a fox but he is also my companion and he has come for his expertise on kitsune. I'm sure you'd agree, who better to hunt a youkai than another youkai?"

The crowd's energy began to dissipate as Miroku's logic sank in. They lowered their weapons slowly. Curious gazes fell on Shippo, Inuyasha, and Koinu. Shippo grinned back at them and waved, though every motion he made spooked them like prey animals. Koinu held Shippo back by the tail while he and Inuyasha steadfastly ignored the attention.

The man that had shouted earlier refused to give in. Viciously he stabbed at Inuyasha and Koinu with his finger. "If they aren't foxes like the demon girl, monk—what are they then?"

Miroku thumped the bottom of his staff to the ground and sighed irritably. "They are inuyoukai and I suggest you stop provoking them or we'll all turn around and leave your demon free to continue stealing from your village."

"What's going on here?" a loud, proud voice hollered through the villagers. The people separated, parting for him like the Red Sea before Moses. It was a Shinto priest in full regalia. His face was tight and haggard. Gray circles had hollowed out his eyes. His skin, already ashen as he approached, paled even more the moment he laid his eyes on Shippo, Inuyasha, and Koinu. "What is this? Who are you people?" he demanded.

"Not this again," Inuyasha snarled, at last losing his temper. "I am so fucking sick of this. Do you idiots want our help with your demon or not?"

The Shinto priest pawed frantically inside his long, drooping sleeves. His eyes were wide and staring and glued on Inuyasha. His fist shot out and a fine layer of whiteness-purification salt—flew into Inuyasha's face and eyes. The hanyou hawked and spat, backing away and pawing at his face.

"Father!" Koinu moved to support Inuyasha as he stumbled backward.

Kasai and Tisoki pushed forward, coming to stand between the priest and the demons. The priest paused, his fist already full with the next bunch of salt. The humans before him were spiritually gifted, he could sense it immediately. In a flash of insight and brilliance he let out a long sigh of relief. "You are the slayers I sent that trader to get!"

"That's what they've been saying, Mr. Yamaiko," the man with the spear said. "Are they telling us the truth?"

"Yes, I believe so," the priest's face sagged with relief. He tossed the purification salt into the dirt at his feet. "I apologize. He had a similarity to the demon child that has haunted us for some nights now."

Tisoki answered the priest gently. "They are our companions, Inuyasha and his son Koinu."

Yamaiko's eyes narrowed with recognition. "I have heard that demon's name before. _Inuyasha…"_

"Fuck," Inuyasha cursed, spitting a few short feet away.

Yamaiko leaned slightly to one side, trying to see the hanyou better—and his mouth fell open in shock. He lifted a shaking hand and pointed toward where Koinu was behind his father, supporting Inuyasha though the hanyou appeared strong enough to stand on his own. "What has happened to you? Your countenance—it's…"

Kasai answered him, stiffly, "You threw purification salt into his face."

"But his hair—it was white! Now…" Yamaiko blustered, stammering in consternation.

Inuyasha lifted his head high, as if he had suddenly found an inner strength or source of pride, but more importantly it was as if nothing was wrong. He brushed at the salt that lingered in the folds of his red haori, sneering at it. He flicked back a strand of long, straight black hair. "Feh, stupid priest, at least we know you're not a fake. Damned purification salt."

"He should've been injured! This change…" Yamaiko shook his head and then his face crinkled with sudden rage. "_You lied!_ They are like the demon girl!"

"What the hell are you blabbering about, old man?" Inuyasha demanded.

The crowd was beginning to whisper and tense. Miroku sensed disaster growing up around them like a weed. Maintaining a calm exterior, the monk jangled his staff, reclaiming the group's attention. "Sir, I do apologize but there seems to be some confusion here. I assure you, Inuyasha and Koinu are not kitsune youkai. If they had been kitsune youkai you are correct, your salt would have injured them with burns. The reaction that you witnessed is normal for one such as Inuyasha."

"The demon girl did the exact same thing!" the crowd called.

Yamaiko murmured the same thing, "She changed into a perfect human child when I threw the salt—just as this Inuyasha has."

Koinu put the answer together first and vocalized it fearlessly in his young, clear voice. "Then your kitsune is _hanyou._ The purification salt forces out the demon side of a hanyou, leaving only the human."

Inuyasha growled irritably at his son and poked at him with his elbow, trying to silence him. "Shut up…"

"You're saying the demon child has some human in her?" Yamaiko asked, gaping.

At the stunned, disgusted expressions amidst the other villagers, Miroku tried to stifle the damage. "It is more common than you would believe, and hanyou are better than demon-kind. The human in their nature controls the demon."

Inuyasha grunted, disapproving with only a sound. He wasn't foolish enough to disagree with Miroku in front of the armed, tense villagers. He could already feel his demon side stirring, flexing its muscles. The purification power of the salt was very limited.

Yamaiko's gaze grew unfocused. He pursed his lips tightly. The crowd waited for his decision. At last he shook his head. "It hardly matters now. I cannot turn you slayers away, no matter how unconventional you appear. The demon girl robs us during the night and two nights ago she slaughtered one of our young men."

Kohimu, standing to guard the rear of the group and protect Shippo from the villagers' hatred, called out to the priest in astonishment. "The kitsune _killed_ a boy?"

From the expressions on the villagers' faces the slayers could see that Yamaiko's words were true. The grief in their eyes and the fear. It was an expression that Inuyasha and Miroku had seen mirrored in other innocent villagers scattered all across Japan.

Kasai spoke then, "But…" she looked toward her father helplessly, seeing the resignation in his expression as he realized that Miyazi had missed this latest bit of rather vital news. The case of the white kitsune had suddenly grown many times more complex and dangerous. When Kasai saw Miroku nod slightly at her, she continued, "…kitsune don't usually kill people. They trick them…"

"It would appear," Yamaiko muttered in a thick voice, "that we are not dealing with a fox after all."

* * *

The world beyond her closed eyes was a blur of motion and distorted sounds. High, small voices circled her and moved past. Gradually Rin's awareness increased and she was able to feel the inside and outside of her body. Outside hands were touching her, adjusting her body, lifting her legs, turning her onto her side. Inside Rin felt an old, familiar ache flexing inside her, low in her abdomen. Sticky warmth flowed between her legs. The female voices chirped higher with alarm.

She recalled the spirit of the monk Kokoro, Tsukiyume's father, telling her that Jishin's gift and curse, the pureblooded child inside her would be driven out of her.

Her body was heavy, achy in the joints and even deeper, inside her bones. Her mind moved sluggishly and when she tried to turn her head or speak to the blurred world around her none of her muscles obeyed her.

Hands landed on her, tugging at her shoulders and slipping underneath her lower back. The invisible owner of those hands was trying to lift her up and carry her. Rin reached out and tried to fight but her hands and arms were limp and floppy. The little movements brought agony searing through her muscles and bones. She whimpered and closed her eyes.

The hands stopped for a moment after her sound made them stop and pull away. More sounds of alarm came from her faceless, blurred caretakers. Rin fought to listen on them, to strain her ears to hear them. When she concentrated just a little the words assaulted her, loud and harsh, grating. She cringed and writhed as much as her pain-wracked body would allow.

_So loud! All of them!_

"What did you do to her?"

"Nothing! I was trying to pick her up! I don't know what happened!"

"You pulled her hair right out of her scalp you stupid girl! What would our mistress think if she saw her prize balding? This magic spell she's under is foul. It makes me sick…"

"I barely touched her! It just fell out!"

A different voice cut in, higher and whinier and more desperate than the other two. "She's bleeding all over the mattress and the blankets! It's everywhere! She's _dying!"_

The voices spilled over Rin, loud and sharp. It was as if the sounds were like metallic gnashing teeth, grinding inches away from her outer ear. Rin's mind hurtled inward, seeking escape. She fell unconscious, grateful to the all-encompassing blackness for covering up the agony waiting for her outside her closed eyes.

* * *

A/N: Hopefully when you hear from me next time I will be happily with my family again and I won't be little Miss Dr. Doolittle anymore. At least I'm getting paid a little for this and for writing the articles. Ugh.

Next time:

_They headed off, weaving through the huts. Villagers moved out of their direct path but managed to line the sides, glaring suspiciously. One of them, the same one that had first incited violence against them on their initial arrival, spat at Koinu. The gob smacked the pup in the cheek and he cringed, wiping it away fastidiously like a cat. When he lifted his own blue eyes back to the villager he couldn't stop the questioning, pained expression that stole over his face. The man saw it and lost his nerve, stepping back to disappear behind one of the other villagers and then one of the houses. _

_Koinu walked on, his head drooping just a little lower, weighed down by hate._


	15. A New Life

A/N: Okay so after _Return_ is finished I have this brand new Sess/Rin idea that is completely unrelated to this universe. I would set it a little after the manga's ending (since I've read it yippee!) and it would be oh so delicious to write...and sad too, but it would be simpler than these stories in the WAOWO universe with all of my original characters. Anyway I'm hoping to hear from you guys about what you think. I have to admit that I got the idea from a series of fan comics on Deviantart. I'll have to include a link later. Anyway I'll try to work out a synopsis here and hopefully you guys will tell me whether you'd waste your time on it or not:

**Beautiful Life: **After Naraku's death young Kohaku returns from training to ask for Rin's hand in marriage. Rin accepts, feeling she has no other choice. When the couple seeks Sesshomaru's blessing as a father figure he denies it. Before Sesshomaru can come to grips with his emotions, and before Rin or the jilted Kohaku can understand their father-figure's decision, tragedy strikes. 500 years later brings an older, wiser, and sadder Sesshomaru to an accidental meeting with a very familiar teenage girl. She is Rin reincarnated but history has a way of repeating itself and it's hard to teach old dogs new tricks...

So there you have a lengthened explanation. Tell me what you think cause I know I'm excited about it.

Disclaimer: I do not own them

Last Chapter: Soeki promised to face her father to help her comatose sister Amagumori. Ginrei is in the Nanka, Shimofuri's castle with Hanone. Shimofuri met up with Jaken and Sess. Sess refused to admit that he's really sick so Shimofuri fought him and knocked him out. Inuyasha, Miroku, Shippo, Koinu, Kohimu, Tisoki, and Kasai left for the village to kill the white kitsune. They received an unhappy welcome and Yamaiko figured out with them through an accident that his demon is actually not a fox but a hanyou something else. Before the slayers came, Saya got her stone back and raided the village again. Rin awoke briefly and felt sick. She is suffering a miscarriage.

* * *

**A New Life**

The Shinto priest Yamaiko shooed most of the villagers while he called Miroku and Kohimu to speak with him. Inuyasha took charge of the others, setting up a spot close to the road. In his human form the hanyou spent a good deal of time glaring between the village and then glancing toward the trees.

"If you smell _anything_," he told Koinu and Shippo, "tell me first. Don't rush after it. This thing is much more dangerous than we thought."

"Could it still be a kitsune?" Koinu asked, his ears swiveling alertly atop his head. "What do you think Shippo?"

The kit scowled. "I don't know. The foxes that kill people usually do it quietly to take on their form. Like if a fox wants a married woman he might kill her husband and—"

"Shut the hell up Shippo," Inuyasha snarled, batting at the kit with one hand. Shippo easily ducked the blow and smirked back at him triumphantly. Inuyasha grunted. "You're just lucky I'm human right now, runt."

Koinu left his bickering father and the young fox boy behind in favor of sitting beside Kasai and Tisoki. The two slayers were going over their weapons, sharpening and readying them for battle. Kasai had pulled out pouches of poison. As Koinu sat at her side he grimaced at the scent wafting from the poisons. "Is it safe for you to handle that stuff?"

Kasai had Kohimu's quiver of arrows at her side. She reached inside and drew out each of the arrows one at a time and then dabbed the sharp tips into a tiny clay bowl. "I'm not handling it."

"Whatever you do, Koinu," Tisoki laughed, grinning, "Don't touch that stuff! You're so clumsy you'd probably poison yourself with it."

Koinu's ears flattened atop his head. "I would not," he said.

"Shut up Tisoki," Kasai ordered him, shaking her head. She paused in her work for a moment to turn and smile at Koinu. "Don't listen to him when he teases you. He's even clumsier than you are after all."

Tisoki snorted, unimpressed. "You're a horrible liar Kasai."

"And so are you! Maybe if you were a little better at it the women wouldn't run away from you!"

They laughed, Tisoki included, until the jangling, musical sound of Miroku's staff caught Koinu's attention. The pup's ears turned to the sound, focusing on it, and his small movement made Kasai twist around to search out her father as well. Miroku and Kohimu were walking side by side. Their expressions were somber and solemn.

Inuyasha stepped forward to greet them. "What's with the glum looks?" he asked, flexing one of his human hands as if he still possessed his deadly claws. "This demon or whatever the hell it is isn't going to be any trouble…"

Miroku motioned to Kohimu with one hand, sending him forward. "Go prepare the weapons, son."

Kohimu nodded and brushed hurriedly past Inuyasha and Shippo to join his brother and sister. His arrival shooed Koinu out of the group. The pup moved to stand behind his father as Miroku came within a few narrow feet of Inuyasha and let out a long, heavy sigh.

The monk planted his staff in the loose soil at his feet and leaned onto it, touching his forehead to the top where the gold rings clicked together. "Kohimu and I have just concluded payment negotiations with Mr. Yamaiko."

Inuyasha grunted and crossed his arms over his chest. "Feh! Is that why you're pouting? Did the priest finally figure out that you're overcharging him?"

Miroku's fingers rapped over his golden staff, jangling the top of it faintly. He sighed again and muttered, "I believe this demon is going to be difficult to resolve indeed."

"What are you talking about?" Inuyasha demanded.

Miroku looked up at last and narrowed his violet eyes on Inuyasha, examining him carefully. The hanyou was still in his human form but around his pupils specks of gold were already infiltrating the blue. As soon as the sun set Inuyasha would revert back to his white-haired, golden-eyed hanyou form. _Good. We'll need his nose then to know for sure._

"Inuyasha, I need to take Shippo and Koinu with me in my next talk with Mr. Yamaiko. He is going to show me where their demon has raided their food stores and where it killed the boy." Miroku gestured toward Shippo and Koinu, summoning them closer.

The hanyou's expression darkened with hurt as Koinu and Shippo moved next to Miroku. He grunted and turned his back on them. "I can't smell when I'm human but it doesn't mean I'm _deaf,_ Miroku," he snarled. He had been relegated to babysitter, he assumed because Yamaiko had purified him and rendered him useless as far as olfactory capability.

"I'm sorry, Inuyasha," Miroku offered, sighing lightly. "I need someone to…" he searched his mind hurriedly, frantic for a convincing lie, "I need someone to make sure Tisoki and Kohimu don't try to pursue the village girls here. This demon could be a shape shifter still and I need you to make sure it doesn't come here disguised as some seductress…"

"Feh," Inuyasha snorted. The monosyllable told Miroku that Inuyasha wasn't falling for his lie but that couldn't be helped.

Miroku ushered Shippo and Koinu away from Inuyasha and the younger slayers. They walked, skirting around the perimeter of the village, but avoiding the shadow of the forest trees. Shippo led the way just slightly. There was a light bounce in his step—confidence. Villagers peeked out from between the houses and huts, curious or disapproving or some mixture of both.

Koinu lingered slightly behind, glancing back to where the slayers and his father had remained behind. His ears laid flat on his head and his lips stayed in a hard, thin line. When Miroku stopped without speaking the pup nearly ran into the monk in his distraction.

"I'm sorry—"

"It's all right," Miroku interrupted him with a hushing motion, quieting him. Shippo was now at his side as well with his green eyes wide and curious, listening. "I apologize for taking you both like this—especially you Koinu. Your father thinks I left him out because he's human right now, but the truth is that something Yamaiko said about this demon makes me nervous." Miroku stared between Shippo and Koinu with a troubled, pensive expression. At last he shook his head. "Yamaiko has already toured Kohimu and I around the village and told us of the boy that was killed and about the nightly raids. I am going to take you both there and I'd like you to tell me what you smell—if anything…"

"What is it, Miroku?" Shippo asked as the monk turned to lead them away. "What is it about this demon that made you leave Inuyasha behind?"

"If I told you my suspicion now it might change what you smell," Miroku said, frowning. "I want neither of you to have an expectation beforehand. Now, come with me. Stay close while we're inside the village."

Koinu and Shippo hurried after Miroku as they moved into the village, passing between the huts. Koinu spotted fishermen mending their nets and preparing lines, a mother sat inside her hut with its open flap, nursing a dirty baby on her gigantic, veined breast. He looked at the ground and felt his cheeks burn as Shippo and Miroku came to stop beside one wooden hut. A sharp stink of fish emanated from it, along with the grating stench of salt.

Shippo made a face and gagged. "Yuck! This hut reeks!"

"This way," Miroku called. He led them around the side of the hut and stopped at one corner where slats of wood had been set down. "This is where the demon raids and eats nearly a whole crate of their stored fish every night."

"That's a lot of fish for a human in one sitting," Shippo observed. "But for a fox it wouldn't be enough…"

Miroku was nodding. "Exactly. This demon eats remarkably little."

"It's young or small then," Koinu said. He sniffed and frowned at the stink. On the youngster's face the silent snarl was incredibly similar to one that Inuyasha would've given an opponent in battle. "I can't smell anything here other than fish."

Shippo gagged again, shaking his head. "I have to agree with Koinu. Unless it left something physical here we wouldn't be able to smell it clearly over the fish inside."

Miroku paused, glancing around to orient himself in the village. The sun was dropping steadily lower in the sky, ducking toward the western horizon. The light of the afternoon was turning golden like his staff. Villagers moved by the fish storage hut, sneaking long stares at Shippo and Koinu. Their eyes lingered on Koinu, caught by his bright hair, alarmed by it.

Koinu's ears flattened, sensing their hatred. "Where's the river? Maybe we'd have more luck there?"

"This way," Miroku instructed.

They headed off, weaving through the huts. Villagers moved out of their direct path but managed to line the sides, glaring suspiciously. One of them, the same one that had first incited violence against them on their initial arrival, spat at Koinu. The gob smacked the pup in the cheek and he cringed, wiping it away fastidiously like a cat. When he lifted his own blue eyes back to the villager he couldn't stop the questioning, pained expression that stole over his face. The man saw it and lost his nerve, stepping back to disappear behind one of the other villagers and then one of the houses.

Koinu walked on, his head drooping just a little lower, weighed down by hate.

The river flowed out of the forest and over the clearing toward the sea in a sandy depression that formed its little riverbed. The water smelled sweet and fresh, and it was clear. Miroku stepped into it and let the cool water brush over his toes. He pointed with his staff toward a discoloration in the sand about five feet away from the depression that marked the river itself.

"That is all that's left of the blood stains from the event." As he spoke Koinu and Shippo moved toward the discolorations and knelt, getting closer to the source to sniff at it. "There was one witness to the attack, another boy. The story that Mr. Yamaiko told me was that the demon was lying beside the river early in the morning and the boy stumbled on her and tried to capture her. She severed his hand at the wrist and the boy died from loss of blood. It was Yamaiko's belief that the demon laid a trap for the boy, purposefully."

Shippo and Koinu moved over the rocky sand with their faces low to the ground, inhaling over and over again until they grew dizzy. Shippo pawed at the soil with his hind legs, scuffing it up to further expose the discolored particles of sand. His puffy brown tail flicked with interest, like a cat's during play. The scent that came from the blood stains was human, a teenager pumped with testosterone. In the blood and sand there was little else to be found.

Koinu sat up, frowning with frustration. He stared down at the blood stains. They spread out in a wide arc facing the river. The boy's stump wrist had spewed blood like a fountain in arterial spray, but then the blood had tapered off and the boy had fallen a few feet from the river and left the larger puddle there. "The attacker didn't linger over the boy at all."

"Yeah," Shippo agreed. "The boy's blood covers most of this but…" he pointed closer to the river, following the arterial spray. "The attack happened more over there."

Koinu and Shippo moved as one and scuffed at the ground with their hands and feet, then ducked and sniffed, searching. There was the scent of ground-burrowing insects, pill bugs, worms, and ants. Then the cloying scent of the dirt and sand itself, coating the inside of their sensitive noses, clogging chemical receptors.

Koinu sat back and sneezed, wiping irritably at his nose. He hadn't usually been used as a bloodhound on demon hunting trips or in training with Inuyasha. His nose was not as acute as his father's and Inuyasha took that into consideration if there was tracking involved somewhere.

Shippo, the pureblooded fox, had more luck. A scent flooded his nose past the dirt-stink and he pulled back, staring at the ground in shock. His reaction didn't go unnoticed.

"What is it, Shippo?"

"What do you smell?" Miroku demanded from the water. He stared intently at the fox kit, waiting for the answer.

"I'm not sure," Shippo answered. He turned and looked at Koinu, thinking hard. "Here, you come and smell it."

Koinu scuttled forward on his hands and knees and moved to the spot that Shippo indicated. He inhaled three times before the scent registered clearly for his nose and then, just as Shippo had, he stopped with shock. He didn't breathe again for a time as his mind skittered over the scent, analyzing it, wondering.

"What is it?" Miroku demanded again, this time with more urgency. He didn't move closer to them for fear that his scent would cloud the evidence and disrupt the findings.

"It's a hanyou," Shippo announced, but his tone indicated that there was more, _a lot more_ he could say about it but wouldn't just yet. He nudged Koinu's shoulder and called to him gently. "Koinu? Can you make it out?"

The pup was still lowered over the spot. He didn't answer. Gradually Koinu breathed once more and moved over the soil, searching for more of the elusive scent. It was located only in a narrow area and the villagers had degraded it by cleaning up the boy's blood after the attack. They had scuffed the dirt, using it to cover up the blood. In doing so they had scattered the precious scent of their demon, hiding it and dousing it in her victim's blood.

At last Koinu found a spot that smelled strong enough for him to test it. As Inuyasha had taught him, Koinu picked up a few of the granules of sand and put them into his mouth. He ran them over the roof of his mouth and closed his eyes, allowing the primitive sensory spots in his brain to spring alive and taste the scent.

"Koinu?" Shippo asked, poking his companion, trying to get a reaction.

Finally the pup sat up and frowned as the particles of sand crushed on his teeth. He looked between Miroku and Shippo with wide, stunned blue eyes and gaped aloud at his own findings. "I'm related to it."

Miroku nodded and heaved a long, thick sigh. "It's exactly as I suspected. We will not be able to kill this demon after all."

* * *

The Lord of the Middle Lands arrived in his castle in the Nanka with two unusual guests. In the forest, after he had knocked Sesshomaru unconscious, Shimofuri commanded Jaken's help in tying the lord's body onto his back. Doing it required the shocked and mortified little imp to untie his master's sash, loosening Bakusaiga to secure Sesshomaru's limp body. Shimofuri became the packhorse in his canine-form not only carrying Sesshomaru, but also giving Jaken a free ride as well. The whimpering, sniveling little imp clung to Shimofuri's neck, holding onot the puff of mane-like blue-black fur there. Jaken also kept hold of Bakusaiga, making sure that the sword didn't brush against the ground while Shimofuri ran.

By some astounding heavenly luck—or perhaps merely because he was gravely ill—Sesshomaru didn't waken enough to struggle during their rough journey. His body remained limp and seemingly lifeless until Shimofuri and Jaken had brought the inuyoukai lord into the Nanka castle. Shimofuri ordered a stretcher and servants arrived with it and gawked as they found themselves bearing an unconscious demon into the castle's guest chambers. Jaken went with him as always, issuing orders and insulting the guards while he fidgeted nervously about his lord's condition.

Shimofuri didn't follow the stretcher or its contents immediately. His first concern lied with his sister and with any news of his uncle's ongoing movements and plans. Without wasting any time on ceremony, Shimofuri moved into his family's personal grounds, following his sister's scent as well as the maids, looking for the human faces that he knew his sister favored as her closest caretakers.

But as he drew closer a foreign scent came to him. He stopped in the middle of the hallway, forcing servants and maids to scurry sheepishly past him with their eyes lowered, as if his lack of movement were somehow their fault and not his. Frowning just slightly, Shimofuri then plowed ahead, hurrying to find the source of the scent. It was from one of the guest rooms and his sister was there as well.

When his shadow fell over the screened door the maid on the other side opened it and bowed before him. "Lord Shimofuri," she murmured in a whisper, "Lady Tsukiyume is napping with one of our guests…"

It was evening with the sun just setting. The heat of the summer day was beginning to dissipate, but the humidity made the sensation of warmth stubbornly hang on. The guest room beyond the maid was stuffy and moist, though several of the screened windows were open allowing a sweet pollen to drift in from the gardens several stories below. Shimofuri could even smell a night rain approaching his castle.

But the rainstorm had arrived too late to herald the strange, dangerous combination of visitors that Shimofuri found himself hosting. Laid out on the floor in blankets and bedding Shimofuri saw Lady Ginrei lying on her side, breathing in small puffs. Her silvered hair was spread out behind her in a long, straight flowing curtain. Sleeping against her was Hanone, Sesshomaru's young pureblooded daughter.

_I have hostages that I didn't even know about._

He glanced to where Tsukiyume slept on her own separate bedding a few feet away from the mother and daughter. His sister's face creased in her sleep, troubled.

A thousand questions swam into his mind on a massive wave of alarm. Why had Ginrei come alone and vulnerable with her child? Where was Rin and Sesshomaru's hanyou daughter, the child that Shimofuri had seen at the wedding? Sesshomaru's wrath would know no bounds when he wakened.

"Wake them," Shimofuri ordered, barking.

The maid bowed obediently and backed away, shuffling on her knees awkwardly to the beds. She called Tsukiyume's name and tentatively touched the young inuhanyou's white dog ears. Tsukiyume blinked and stared up into the maid's eyes only for a moment before Shimofuri's form in the doorway caught her attention. She sat up and bowed to her brother, "Brother—my lord…"

Shimofuri stepped authoritatively into the room and gave the maid a swift, hard gesture that told her to leave. She vanished out the door and slid it shut behind her as Shimofuri stood over the three formerly sleeping females. Ginrei was stirring, opening her eyes in slow increments while Hanone whimpered and squirmed at the sight of a strange, powerful male hovering nearby.

"Tell me what they're doing here," Shimofuri ordered.

"Our cousin brought them. Soeki took them from Uncle's castle…"

Ginrei sat up. She moved slowly but with surprising grace considering that she had only moments ago been asleep. "Lord Shimofuri," she bowed to him in a low, humbling motion that was meant to distract him from her other movement as she pushed Hanone behind her, protecting the small pup. "I ask your forgiveness."

"How did you come to be with Lord Sasugainu?" he demanded.

Ginrei stayed low in her bow. "There was an earthquake. It was not a natural event. My daughter was taken from me and I was told by an otherworldly being that I could find her with Lord Sasugainu. So that was where I went. I could not leave my daughter unprotected."

"What happened to Lady Rin? And what of Sesshomaru's other daughter?"

There was a long, stiff pause. Then Ginrei rose out of her bow and shook her head. "I cannot know for certain."

Shimofuri let out a short, irritated growling sound. "Well your husband is in the guest quarters a few floors down. He's very sick. He was poisoned and it…" he stopped, silencing himself in favor of starting over. "You and your daughter must go to him. You are not my hostages. I have no desire to make an enemy of Lord Sesshomaru."

Ginrei stared at him keenly with her steely silver-blue eyes. "Is my husband dying, Lord Shimofuri?"

"No," Shimofuri answered her. "But from looking at him you wouldn't believe that he's going to live."

* * *

Rin came out of the darkness suddenly, with no warning and nothing to ease her abrupt waking. One moment she had no senses and knew nothing but a blackness so consuming that it swallowed her thoughts and her entire sense of self, smothering her like water drowns a lost swimmer in the sea. The very next second in time she was awake and alert, lying on her back in a dully lit room.

And the world was not as it had been before—in fact it had never been as it was now.

The light glowed and flickered, almost seeming to pulsate. There was a blanket covering her face in the way it might be used to cover up a corpse. Rin sat up, claustrophobically pulling at the blanket and gasping for air. When she breathed her nose was assaulted, overwhelmed with her own scent filled with sweat, tears, and a rich, sharp metallic scent. Sounds hit her ears, footsteps and floor creaks, the groan of the wood walls and the ceiling, the dribble of water outside in the eaves and _her own heartbeat._

Panicked, Rin covered her ears with her hands and closed her eyes. Thoughts skipped in her head, jumping erratically with panic. With her hands over her ears she heard her own body, the rush of air passing through her nose, the thump of her heart, the gurgle of her gut and even faint groaning sound that her muscles and joints made as she moved. _What's happening to me?_

A sour smell hit her nose and Rin looked up, alert and aware. The scent accompanied a woman dressed as a priestess in red and white robes. The woman was at the door with her back turned toward Rin. She was shutting the door with one hand. The sound came to Rin even through the hands covering her ears: a rough, grating sigh of wood on wood.

While Rin cringed away from the sound, the priestess turned and saw Rin at last. The priestess's mouth fell wide open, agape. She dropped to her knees. The bowl of herb-water for purification dropped to the matting on the floor. The priestess quivered and shook and began to chant a prayer.

The words were too loud. Rin scooted backward, trying to escape it only to find herself staring down at her blood-streaked legs and the bright, crimson stains on her robes. She cried out with alarm and forgot about the loudness of the new world around her to touch her legs, searching for a wound. Her hands fell over her abdomen and she remembered the child, the abomination that had taken root inside her, binding her to the will of an enraged goddess…

_The blood…_She felt a hot flash of relief and her limbs quivered with energy and renewed strength. She had miscarried. The sharp metallic smell came to her again and Rin recognized it now: _Blood. Lots and lots of blood. _

The priestess was still chanting on the floor. The scent of the herbs was harsh and acrid to Rin's nose, making her mildly nauseous. Rin opened her mouth to try and speak but the voice that emerged was clouded, deeper and raspier, as if she was trying to speak with one lung filled with water.

The priestess rambled apologies and prayers, intertwining them while she craned her neck up from her bowing position to stare gawkingly at Rin.

The priestess's stare unnerved Rin, making her body tense. Strange details reached out for her attention, each trying to explain what was happening and individually failing. Rin saw strands of long, straight black hair on the bedding where her head had been. She saw fingerprints left in blood alongside her bedding and on her robes and even imprinted on her skin.

And then, looking down at her body, Rin saw more of her hair falling around her, dropping as readily as leaves in an autumn storm. She touched the strands in horror, crying out. Tears pooled immediately in her eyes, coupled with the increasing alarm and panic. _I'm dying,_ she thought, unaware that her thoughts echoed her mate's miles and miles away.

On her wrists she saw a splash of color, a single jagged streak on the pale flesh of both arms. It was yellow in color, making Rin immediately think of Shimofuri with his markings—but these were on _her_ wrists. They were dull but clearly visible…

More sounds and scents pummeled Rin. The grating growl of the door, high pitched voices of maids, the accumulating stink of sweat, and then a different smell. Flowery on the surface but sharp beneath in a way that Rin had no words to describe with her human language and background. When she looked up she saw that two maids had spilled into the room. They wore clean gray robes that had just been pulled out of storage—Rin could smell the dust still coating them. Flowing in behind the maids was a surprisingly short inuyoukai woman. She had a straw-brown hair with pale green eyes like the inside of a zucchini. The marks on her cheeks, one on each side, were orange-brown.

The maids were the first to speak, gasping amongst themselves and whispering wildly with fear.

"We saw her die, my lady! I swear it!" one of them cried, falling to her knees and pawing at the inuyoukai woman's robe.

"The priestess said she had died! The childbed fever took her after the miscarriage."

The priestess was lying flat on the floor in a bow. "I am certain her heart stopped, milady."

"This is impossible," the inuyoukai woman said. She stepped forward and hissed out an order to the priestess in front of her. "Get out of my way."

The small inuyoukai woman approached Rin's bedding and picked over the blanket though her eyes never left Rin's. The scent of blood and sweat wafted up from the bedding and the blankets. Rin saw the ugly, jarring bloom of blood over the middle of the sleeping mat and felt her stomach lurch inside her.

The inuyoukai woman narrowed her green eyes on Rin in an expression that was fast becoming one of anger, perhaps even outrage. "This isn't possible. This wasn't supposed to happen…" she reached out with one hand with the speed of a snake and Rin cringed as her fingers latched onto her chin and pulled her closer for the dog demon woman to examine her. The pale green eyes roved frantically over Rin's face, visually clawing at it. "This isn't possible," she repeated, spitting her words out in a whisper, "you're no longer human!"

* * *

The sky was beginning to cloud up as the sun set, casting its last rays horizontally through the trees. The light painted the tree trunks around Saya gold, bright and brilliant. She stared at them and sniffled back her tears. The color reminded her of her father's eyes.

The humans had not changed their vigil. The number of men patrolling the edges of Kagainsen was the same as it had been the night before. Saya crept forward through the ferns and small saplings. Leaves brushed her cheeks, tickled her neck and the top of her head. Spiders crawled and dangled on their silvery threads from Saya's hands and arms. She pawed at them dismissively, more annoyed than bothered by them. Eating insects was not something she had quite resorted to yet. Her mother's orders against such behavior still held true and Saya obeyed them though she had not seen her mother in what felt like years.

Just as the human men played security guard and moved around Kagainsen in their usual formations, Saya circled the perimeter, staring out through the foliage. Something bothered her on this night that she couldn't place. The men were normal around most of the village, but then near the river, which was her favorite place to sneak into the village, Saya saw a different kind of man.

Most humans all looked alike to her, especially from afar, but Saya had never seen a boy with sandy, tawny colored hair before. He was sitting on the banks of the river when she first glimpsed him, knelt over and drinking. Even the way he drank was unusual. He knelt and lapped at the water like an animal with his tongue rather than using his hands.

A voice floated out to her through the night, addressing the boy with the tawny hair: "Shippo! Cut that out!"

The boy sat up and twisted around at the waist to look back toward the village. In the light of the campfires in the distance Saya saw the boy's outline was complete with a puffy tail. Her small mouth fell open in wonderment.

"What? Does it bother you, Inuyasha?" The boy's tail twitched as he spoke.

A man's shape broke off from the line of huts, stepping forward. "As soon as that sun sets and I'm back to normal you'd better be running shrimp!"

Saya had heard the name _Inuyasha_ before. Jaken had mentioned it, as had her mother, but Saya hadn't grasped its meaning enough to remember it now. The man that this name was attached to appeared dull and ordinary except for the darkness and fullness of his hakama and haori. His clothing was more elaborate than the other villagers with the exception of the monster Yamaiko. Inuyasha was not a peasant then, and he was new to the village unless Saya had somehow missed seeing him on her other nights.

More people moved about near the river with _Shippo_ the boy with a tail and _Inuyasha _the not-peasant man. Saya recognized that some of them were younger humans. One of them stuck out. In the gathering dark his hair shone brightly, like lightening against black rainclouds. Saya took a moment to glance at her own messy, dirty hair and catch its dulled brilliance. The similarity reached her, but not its possible implications.

The people by the river split into three groups and dispersed. One group went into the village to be absorbed by the huts and houses there. The other two moved toward the darkness of the forest surrounding Kagainsen. One of the groups was heading toward her—and they were armed. Saya saw a golden staff catching the dying sunlight with one man and the waggle of an inflexible sheathed sword tied at the waist of another.

Saya turned and fled deeper into the woods. The voices behind her told her that her pursuers had heard her but were not alarmed. She heard them repeat _demon_ amongst themselves, but it was not shouted as an insult. Instead they were debating, talking calmly.

Although her curiosity was piqued, Saya's motivation remained simple: _food._ She backtracked toward the village, avoiding the strange group that had entered the forest. It was easy enough to do because her pursuers were blundering about, making a lot of noise. Saya avoided them without considering their lack of stealth. She crouched back at the edge of the forest and stared out from a different angle, closer to the beach.

The men had thinned their guard. Saya waited for twenty minutes with her stomach twisting in on itself and her throat growing steadily drier, but only one man walked past on patrol, tense and nervous. It was odd but Saya gave it little thought. As soon as the man passed by she darted forward and into the mass of huts and houses.

Some humans were still awake inside their homes, whispering quietly. Others in different huts made grunting noises or small moans that Saya found unpleasant. Normally by the time she snuck into the village everyone was asleep because the guards only lost their vigilance with great fatigue. Now they had dropped their guard much sooner, allowing Saya to hear the humans and even catch glimpses of them walking between the huts. She stayed low to the ground, straining her ears for their footsteps and breathing.

The fish hut came into view and Saya saw that the slats of wood had been left uprooted for her. It was an amazing lapse in the humans' judgment but Saya was grateful. Once more she gave no thought to the suspiciously easy nature of her latest raid. She knelt at the corner and pawed around, feeling the loose dirt. She shoveled it out, clearing the hole.

The stink of fish was always overpowering inside and just outside the hut. Saya could smell nothing but fish and the acrid stench of salt. It was a weakness she hadn't thought about. Her thoughts centered only on the promise of a full belly.

Saya wriggled into the hole head first, grunting with effort. Her hands and arms came free and laid flat on the earthen floor inside the hut, hauling herself out. Before she could free her legs, Saya heard a rustling sound.

Alarmed, she looked up and saw something move, coming at her. Saya gasped and shielded her head and face. A net fell over her, smelling heavily of saltwater and fish oils. Saya kicked and tried to slide back through the hole but hands fell over her, clutching her arms and her clothes. She writhed, slipping out of what remained of her once luxurious under robe, but the grasp on her arm didn't let up and it was _strong._

Saya screamed and lashed out as she had with Odaku. At first her hands came in contact only with wide swathes of fabric and her fingers slid off the actual hand holding her. Frustrated, desperate, Saya growled and used one leg to partially lunge at her captors. Her tiny claws met with flesh and a male voice cried out. The hold on her arm disappeared and Saya fell partway back into the hole.

"Dammit," a deeper, more adult voice growled through the darkness and Saya saw another flash of movement just as a different set of hands landed on her shoulders, beneath her armpits. It hauled her up with such speed that Saya could barely comprehend what was happening. Her captor half-dropped, half-threw her onto the floor. The impact knocked the wind from her lungs and instinctually Saya curled into a fetal position, shaking as adrenaline poured into her body.

"Did the little bitch hurt you?" the gruff voice asked.

"She got my shoulder but it's not that bad…" a different, gentler male voice answered.

Saya kicked and squirmed as she realized through her shock that no one was holding her—but the net they'd thrown over her tangled her arms and legs. Saya cried out, helpless but desperate. She almost didn't catch their voices calling to her through the dark.

"Hey kid! Kid! Shut up! Stop bawling!" the gruff voice said.

"We aren't going to hurt you," the gentler one reassured her.

Saya didn't believe them even for a moment. She closed one hand around the lines in the net and then slashed with the other, making a hole. She tore at it and the ripping, snapping sound alerted her captors.

"Shit, she's trying to get out."

"Can you blame her?"

"Light that damned torch already!"

A second later the fish hut blazed into view as a fire sprang up, seemingly out of nowhere. Saya stopped, stunned by it. The fire had been called up out of thin air! She missed the green BIC lighter that one of her captors pocketed as he lifted the torch up. Barrels and boxes of fish and other seafood lined the walls. A few of them had claw marks at the sides where Saya had torn them open to feed like a lion at the kill—a stolen kill.

Saya had freed one arm and shoulder, as well as part of her head by the time her captors had lit the torch. Now she froze, staring with wide, bedazzled eyes at both the sudden light and at what it illuminated. Her hunger was forgotten, her fear buried for a moment, replaced only with awe.

The man that she had labeled as _Inuyasha_ was there, standing beside the youth that had caught her attention earlier with his bright hair. When Saya had seen him a few minutes before, when the sun was just barely dropping below the horizon, Inuyasha had had black hair like an ordinary man. Now he stood beside the magical torch and faced her with the same white hair that she and her father shared. The youth at his side had it as well along with a pair of soft blue eyes that made Saya think strangely of her mother—there was tenderness in his expression in spite of the fact that Saya had slashed his shoulder. Drops of blood had splattered the floor at his feet to remind them all of that fact.

Their features might not have affected her so much, if not for the fact that she recognized not only Inuyasha's hair, but also his eyes. His eyes were her father's, his eyes were hers. Blood called to blood and Saya knew, though the ultimate confirmation of smell had yet to happen, that she had found a close relative.

And he would surely save her from the humans.

* * *

A/N: I apologize for my tardiness in posting too btw. I had a hard time writing anything lately. It's also depressing that I put in this hard work and then like for _Innocence_ there are only three reviews. Le sigh as the French would say. I'll stop whining now. Next time:

_By the orange light Kagainsen's much feared little demon was clearly visible entangled in the net they'd tossed over her **and she was a female, miniaturized version of Sesshomaru.** _

_The sight of her, covered and caked with dirt, her robes torn ragged and halfway off, with her hair so dirty that the brilliance of the white was lost, incited a strange twisting in Inuyasha's gut. It was something like anger, but tinged with a deeper emotion that he had no name for, but it made his stomach tighten. _

_"Shit," he cursed, bitterly. "Fuck."_


	16. Revelation

A/N: We had two biggies last chapter! And with the amount of people who wrote in and told me how happy they were that Saya had finally been rescued, I decided that since I was writing really steadily on this story and had this chapter already done that I'd just post it right away. Plus i wanted to thank everyone and so this chapter is like my little gift. Here expect more Saya/Inuyasha and then a much deeper look into Rin's situation.

Also I'd like to thank everyone that reviewed last chapter. It was a great welcome back! :-D In this spot I'll take a moment to thank the readers that reviewed without signing in: **Lian** thank you! And in answer to your question: Yes I think. **New Fan** Thank you! I have seen your reviews show up several times and when I get bad anonymous reviews I always think of you and others that leave "anonymous" reviews, and that's why I continue accepting them. I loved your interest in _Beautiful Life_ and I thought you'd like to know I'm currently writing the first chapters to see how it feels and fits. Soon I'll offer up some examples.

Disclaimer: I do not own them

Last Chapter: Miroku took Shippo and Koinu and they realized that they weren't hunting a demon they could legitimately kill because it happens to be Koinu's cousin and IY's niece. Saya got to meet the other half of her family at last. Shimofuri brought Sess back to his castle to protect him and found Ginrei and Hanone there. He hasn't learned yet of Amagumori's condition. Rin woke up to a whole new world…

* * *

**Revelation **

Shimofuri's castle had become a place of waiting, of deathwatch. For inuyoukai, with their extended life spans it felt to Shimofuri as if he could scarcely pass a year or a month without a deathwatch. Just before he had left to recover Sesshomaru he'd faced a tense, pained time hovering over his precious sister. Before that it had been his mother. Now it was the wife and cousin that he had never bothered to appreciate through his bitterness and suspicion. If he had failed Amagumori in her brief life with him Shimofuri would make certain that he stayed by her side as a proper husband should while she lingered, caught between life and death.

Soeki had left to stop Sasugainu, but with the speed that Amagumori's body was shutting down Shimofuri had little doubt that her efforts would come too late. Tsukiyume had cuddled next to Amagumori through the nights, warming their cousin with her own body heat. Amagumori slept dreamlessly and it seemed that her body was failing. Although it had been days since she had relieved herself Amagumori didn't wet her linens, which meant that her body was fouling itself as internal toxins built up. Her skin yellowed, her faint and rare breaths smelled sour.

After Shimofuri had sent Ginrei and Hanone to attend Sesshomaru as proper family should, Tsukiyume had informed him of Amagumori's condition. Shame was the first thing that Shimofuri felt. Amagumori had always come last in his mind. He'd found his sister and then his odd guests, and he hadn't even thought to wonder where his wife had gotten to.

Now the night wore on and Tsukiyume laid under the sheets beside Amagumori's chilled body, touching her nose to her sister-in-law's cheek. "It was so hard you know," she murmured. Her eyes were closed.

Shimofuri, leaning against the bed on the other side, lifted his head slightly to stare at his sister. "What was hard?"

Tsukiyume smiled and her white ears swung to and fro. "Being caught between your coldness and Amagumori's innocence. I kept seeing her with your eyes, Shishi-sama. You see her as empty-headed and kept her away like she had a disease."

Shimofuri closed his eyes and lowered his head again, as if trying to hide. He said nothing, hoping that Tsukiyume would fall into a permanent silence if he didn't contest her or join her.

"I don't think she was happy, but she wasn't empty-headed. She was obedient, that's all. Uncle told her to marry you, so she did because she couldn't imagine disobeying her father. I know you despised her for trapping you too but when Mother was alive you almost never disobeyed her, Brother. She was just like you in that way." Tsukiyume sighed and moved her hand over Amagumori's mouth and nose, feeling for the tiny puffs of air that marked her as still living.

"I have done wrong by her," Shimofuri admitted quietly. "And if we lose her the only thing I can do is to avenge her. I can't change what I did."

"And if she lives?" Tsukiyume asked.

"Then I will amend what I've done," Shimofuri said, pursing his lips.

"We can't let Uncle kill anyone else in our family." Tsukiyume thought of her father's spirit, of the temple where he had once prayed before the Buddha. Tsukiyume had been stabbed in the temple not long ago yet she longed to return to that moment to see Amagumori awake and strong. Their cousin's death was proving to be cowardly and pathetic. An inuyoukai, proud and majestic, shouldn't die by fading away in the prime of her life.

"I know," Shimofuri replied and his voice was heavy, filled with shame and pain.

"And Sesshomaru and Ginrei, they are our family now too. They are both our cousins. Brother, you have to protect them too."

"I know." As bitter as it could still make Shimofuri feel he knew that he had to bury such emotions as petty and burdensome in the current crisis. After a moment he smiled and asked, "Tsukiyume, why are you always right? You're too young to be so wise."

"It's always easy to watch from the sidelines where you can see everything. Wisdom is an illusion. I'm just a worthless hanyou after all."

Her words, self-mocking and lighthearted, didn't have the desired effect on Shimofuri. He lifted his head, abruptly alert. "Lady Ginrei didn't know where Lady Rin or her hanyou daughter were. Sesshomaru won't sit still unless we find them."

"There's time," Tsukiyume said. "Sesshomaru isn't going to be a threat to anyone for some time still."

"What if they were killed?"

"I doubt that Rin would've been killed. There's something about her that refuses to die and I think she has a future still." There was a pause and then Tsukiyume spoke again in a lower, darker voice. "But her little girl—hanyou are always in danger and she was so small. Sesshomaru sheltered her so much. She was his lookalike. If she's in the Western Lands a demon is bound to target her and Rin just because of the little one's resemblance to him."

Shimofuri frowned. "Let's hope they've found a safe haven."

* * *

At first when Koinu, Miroku, and Shippo had come back telling Inuyasha, cautiously, about their suspicion that Kagainsen's _fox demon killer_ was actually his niece, he'd thought it was a joke. His initial reaction was to scoff at them and say, "You don't know what you're talking about!"

And it was true. It was unfathomable for Inuyasha to consider that his niece, the hanyou child of Sesshomaru and Rin, could be stealing fish and killing boys in a poor little village on the beach. Since seeing an unhappy, pregnant Rin some years before rumors had reached Inuyasha and his family of Sesshomaru's daughter—_daughters_ actually—born healthy and alive. Yet other than that there was nothing. Inuyasha and Sesshomaru weren't likely to write to one another detailing the births of their children. Even if there had been a Hallmark store for them to shop at that saved them the trouble of wasting ink on one another neither brother would've even entered it.

Before the sun had completely set Miroku and the others had decided to lay out their trap. They spoke to the villagers, telling them to let down their guard so that the demon could come and raid their fish hut sooner than usual. Inuyasha had reluctantly followed Miroku's plan. He went with Koinu to the fish hut before his demonic powers had quite returned. When they did his nose was clogged with the stink of fish and sea salt but he thought obsessively of leaving Koinu to check out the banks of the river for himself. Shippo was a foolish fox, Miroku couldn't smell at all, and Koinu's sense of smell had been diluted by Kagome's human genes. None of them knew what they were talking about and none of them were as intimately familiar with Sesshomaru's scent.

But Inuyasha stayed where he was obediently. Not because he wanted to be obedient, but because he didn't want to abandon the trap and he wasn't willing to leave Koinu alone. His son was still young and inexperienced, and Inuyasha would never risk leaving his child vulnerable to an unknown enemy.

It wasn't long, however, before he and Koinu heard the demon scratching around outside the fish hut. After their stinky wait inside they eagerly captured the little beast and though Inuyasha tried to smell her over the fish and salt the final confirmation of her identity didn't come until they had lit the torch. By the orange light Kagainsen's much feared little demon was clearly visible entangled in the net they'd tossed over her _and she was a female, miniaturized version of Sesshomaru. _

The sight of her, covered and caked with dirt, her robes torn ragged and halfway off, with her hair so dirty that the brilliance of the white was lost, incited a strange twisting in Inuyasha's gut. It was something like anger, but tinged with a deeper emotion that he had no name for, but it made his stomach tighten.

"Shit," he cursed, bitterly. "Fuck."

Koinu's white ears turned backward and the pup briefly snuck a glance at his father, concerned. "Father?"

Inuyasha glanced between his son and his filthy, feral niece and cursed again unashamedly. "You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me."

The child was watching them. Her eyes were wide and shining gold. There were clear trails that ran through the dirt on her face, places where her tears had cleaned away the dust. Her little lips quivered.

Koinu pushed the flickering torch at Inuyasha, forcing him to hold it while he knelt to be on level with the little girl. "Hi," Koinu called to her, smiling brightly. "My name's Koinu. I think…I'm your cousin…"

The child recoiled from him when he stretched out his hand, whimpering.

"We won't hurt you," Koinu reassured her. Where he was kneeling a few drops of blood began to dribble down into the sandy floor of the hut. The tiny girl's eyes followed the dripping and widened with alarm. Koinu followed her gaze and shrugged, wincing with pain at the motion. "That's nothing, just a scratch. You're not in trouble or anything…"

Again Koinu reached out for her and this time the little girl scooted forward awkwardly with the net moving around her. She reached out with one of her clawed hands tentatively only to cringe back when she saw Inuyasha move stiffly, showing disapproval in the slightest movement.

"I don't care who she is Koinu, don't be stupid. She killed some village kid—be careful."

At his words the little girl scuttled backward until her back was to the wall. She began to whimper and cry in earnest. Big tears slipped out of her eyes and her chin and lips quivered. She stared past the lines of the netting, her gaze darting between Koinu and Inuyasha like a beaten puppy that expected the next blow at any moment and from anywhere.

Koinu frowned up at Inuyasha. "You're scaring her," he said.

"Feh," Inuyasha grunted, but his monosyllabic answer revealed hesitation. He tried to look away from his niece, tried to tell himself that this was _not_ really a harmless little girl…but it was very hard to convince himself to be disinterested.

"Let me take that net off you," Koinu offered. As the pup moved forward cautiously and tugged on the edges of the net, Inuyasha watched with narrowed eyes and a tense posture. If Koinu was in danger it would be the girl that paid for it, no matter what her appearance suggested. Inuyasha's son came above Sesshomaru's daughter in orders of importance.

The girl sat still, watching Koinu carefully as he pulled the net from her. Koinu rolled the net into a ball in his fists and turned to put it at his father's feet. Inuyasha hissed with alarm above him and when Koinu turned back to his cousin the little girl had dropped into a deep bow. The movement had startled Koinu's father but it had proven benign. For a moment Koinu stared uncomprehendingly, then he cocked his head to one side and smiled. "What do you suppose that's all about?"

"Feh," Inuyasha snapped, "She probably came out of the womb doing that to make sure that bastard Sesshomaru wouldn't kill her for being hanyou."

The child lifted her head slightly when she heard _hanyou_ and _Sesshomaru,_ taking a sharp interest. For the first time she risked speaking, unable to restrain her curiosity with the recurring word _hanyou_ that was somehow related to her. "What is _hanyou?_" her voice croaked with disuse.

Inuyasha and Koinu turned at once to look at her. Inuyasha, always ready with a quick, sometimes brainless retort, was the first to answer her. "It's _you, _kid."

Koinu had a longer explanation. "It's when a human and a demon have a child. The _hanyou_ is the child."

That only brought on another question, this one quieter and darker, with a voice shaking as a precursor to tears. "What is _demon?"_

"It's a dumb word the humans use to describe a bunch of things they're afraid of," Inuyasha replied. His stance changed, his arms unfolded and he sighed. Koinu peeked at his father over one shoulder and smiled, recognizing the change in position as signaling a loss of hostility. Inuyasha was beginning to give into curiosity and instinct. "All right, we need to get her the hell out of this stupid fishy place."

The little girl's expression changed, showing alarm as Inuyasha approached her. Koinu put out an arm, stopping his father. "She's still scared. Let me take her, Father."

"Fine, but hurry it up." Inuyasha got to his feet and moved with the torch light to unbar the solid wood door on the fish hut. A breeze flowed in as he grunted and pushed the door open. The fish and salt smell mixed with the sweet scent of the forest outside and the acrid smoke of the humans' fires.

Koinu sat on his hands and knees before his cousin and reached slowly for one of her long strands of hair. She cringed as he touched her but gradually accepted his touch and stared into his eyes. Koinu smiled down at her. "Your hair is so dirty! My mother would love to give you a bath!"

The girl took hold of his hand with her own gently and then began shaking, crying with enough force that it shook her shoulders. "Koinu," she sobbed his name, choking on it as she tested it. "Koinu…"

She crawled forward with a sudden motion that startled Koinu and pressed her small body to his stomach and chest. Koinu heard her snuffling loudly. She was taking in his scent as well as seeking comfort. The scent that she found didn't repel her so Koinu assumed she really was his cousin because he still couldn't smell her through the stink of the salty fish.

She blubbered almost incoherently into his haori. "Can Koinu take this one to the Western Lands?"

"Koinu—hurry up. We've got to get her out of here before Miroku comes back," Inuyasha called from the door.

Gently, and slowly, Koinu moved his arms under the little girl. She was a little large for him and a bit heavy, but Koinu propped her up on his hip the way he'd seen Sango handle her toddlers and started heading for the door after his father. His cousin clung to him, afraid of falling. She squirmed, putting her face into his hair and her chin on his shoulder. "Please don't take me to the man with the tall hat!" she pleaded.

_Man with the tall hat,_ Koinu thought, translating her words: _Yamaiko, the Shinto priest._ As part of the priest's regalia he had probably worn a hat while trying to purify the girl.

"I promise I'm not going to take you anywhere bad and we won't go and see the man with the funny hat," Koinu said. He fumbled with his haori, opening it to try and shield the tiny girl in case there were any snoopy villagers waiting around the fish hut. If the villagers realized that their demon was actually _family_ to Inuyasha and Koinu there would be an uproar, a riot of outrage.

"Hurry up!" Inuyasha motioned Koinu forward into the open doorway. He had slipped out of his red haori and as Koinu approached he wrapped it around Koinu's body like a blanket. He paused on the opposite shoulder from where his niece was cowering to examine Koinu's bleeding wound. He fished through the fabric and his ears fell backward as his expression changed into one of anger. "Dammit," he cursed.

"I'm fine," Koinu insisted.

"I should carry her," Inuyasha growled.

"You scare her. We have to go, Father."

"If I'm her fucking uncle she'll get over it when she smells me." Inuyasha snatched the girl up from his son, wrapping her like a baby in his massive red haori. The child struggled, whimpering faintly. "Cut it out, I ain't gonna hurt you. I know your dad." His words, and perhaps his scent outside of the fish hut calmed the girl and she clung to his cream-white undershirt.

They hurried out of the village after Koinu barred the entrance to the hut again, heading for the impromptu campsite they had set up near the road that led to Kagainsen. When they reached it they saw that Shippo and Kasai, the least threatening of the slayers, were waiting.

"Was Miroku right, Inuyasha?" Shippo called as they approached. His sharp green eyes had already picked out the unusual red bundle in the hanyou's arms.

Koinu answered him, "Yes."

Inuyasha set his small bundle down on the sand near Shippo and Kasai, gently. The girl whimpered and moved beneath the fabric. Slowly she pushed her head out from under it and blinked up at Shippo and Kasai. The fox grinned playfully; Kasai stared with a look of bafflement.

"She doesn't look like you _that _much," Kasai announced. "She has the marks of a highborn youkai."

"She's covered in dirt but believe me the resemblance is there," Inuyasha muttered. He jabbed his finger at Shippo. "You go catch something small." His finger changed positions, sliding to Kasai. "You be ready to make it into food when he gets back."

Shippo blinked with surprise. "But I don't think anyone's hungry…"

"The kid is, can't you smell it?" Inuyasha demanded, irritably.

"Oh, yeah…" Shippo wrinkled up his nose for a moment, casting a last curious glance at the little hanyou before turning and literally vanishing into thin air as he teleported into the darkness of the woods.

The fox's sudden disappearance made the hanyou girl flinch. She looked around with desperation for a moment, making quick eye contact with Inuyasha and Koinu for reassurance.

Inuyasha captured her attention as he changed position slightly, sitting close to her and crossing his arms over his powerful chest. "Okay kid," he began, "I need you to start talking. You don't know me but I know your dad and I knew your mom. I'm your Uncle. My name is Inuyasha." He turned slightly and nodded his head to Koinu who had moved to sit where Shippo had been beside Kasai. "That's my son Koinu, your cousin. How did you get here and why would these stupid humans tell us that you killed someone?"

The girl's small mouth fell open in consternation. "Inu-yasha," she tested his name in a wavering voice. "_Uncle."_ There was a pause and then she whispered, "This one is called Saya."

Inuyasha scowled. "You don't have to talk like that," he said.

"Saya," Koinu called, gently. The little girl turned and looked at him, sniffling at her unshed tears. "We need to know—did you kill someone?"

Saya recoiled from the question. Her facial expression warped between horror, fear, and something else like rage or fury. Her breathing stuttered jaggedly. She tried to avoid the question. "What is _uncle?"_

"I'm your dad's brother," Inuyasha told her, grunting. "Now stop asking questions of your own and start answering ours. Did you kill one of the villagers?" All doubt that she was his niece faded when he saw the way that Saya rubbed her face against his haori and sniffed loudly. It was more than fighting her tears—she was comforting herself with his scent. The stink of fish continued to cloud Inuyasha's own sense of smell, but he had no doubt that when he did scent the girl clearly she would reek of Sesshomaru, a powerful, distinctive scent that always made Inuyasha's gut tense and his palms sweat.

"He hurt me!" Saya cried out, suddenly hysterical. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. "He touched me—he pulled on my legs! I had to stop him! He—"

"It's okay," Koinu interrupted her, making a soft hushing sound. "You're not in trouble, Saya."

Saya opened her eyes and looked at Inuyasha. She was panting and trembling with the memory. She watched him, searching for a reaction. It was there in the hard set of Inuyasha's jaw, in the flattening of his ears and the narrowing of his golden eyes. At last he spoke, bitterly. "Those fuckers."

His niece had no word for _rape_ and she wouldn't understand sex at all, but she _did_ understand an inappropriate intimate touch. Though Inuyasha wanted to ask her for more information, Saya's words _he touched me _and _he pulled on my legs _told him vaguely what had happened. The villagers had said the demon laid a trap for the boy and took off his hand. The power of it terrified them, but Inuyasha saw something else in it. Saya had severed the boy's _hand._ She had been protecting herself from those hands. Killing him had been an accident.

With a last growl, Inuyasha pushed the troubling thoughts out of his head and focused back on his trembling niece. "You've been in this village for days," he spoke slowly, gently. "What happened to your parents?"

This question brought fresh tears, bright and shining in the faint moonlight. Saya shook her head helplessly. "This one…" she stopped and stammered when Inuyasha made a face at her and rephrased her words. "I don't know." She choked, bowing her head as she started to sob. "I want to go home!"

Inuyasha's ears fell backward and he looked up toward Koinu and Kasai. "There's no way she's been abandoned here. Something's up with Sesshomaru."

"What are you going to do, Father?" Koinu asked.

The hanyou sighed and then pulled on his own white hair and then his dog ears once, growling low to himself. "Fuck," he cursed yet again. "The last time this shit happened Sesshomaru almost killed you, Koinu."

The boy nodded and his ears fell backward. "I…I think I remember it." He touched his cheeks and his nose, as if recalling the crushing pressure of Sesshomaru's palm over his face.

"Shouldn't he be grateful?" Kasai asked, shaking her head. "These villagers would've killed her eventually and it's not as if he was here to stop them." The tone of her voice revealed the depth of her confusion as well as a hint of disgust for the powerful inuyoukai in question. As a demon slayer in training, apprenticed to her mother and to her father, Kasai knew as well as Koinu and Inuyasha did how bizarre it was for Saya to be abandoned in the first place _if_ her parents were still alive and assumably they were.

"You'd be surprised. We'll have to see what's going on," Inuyasha grumbled, resignedly. He stared down at his crying niece and took in the dirtied fabric of her robes. It was a fine, rich material. Saya was thin but she was far from undernourished. She couldn't have been more than four but she was well developed, speaking clearly and in a way that told Inuyasha that Saya had lived almost _exactly as he had as a young child._

She had been sheltered and loved and treasured. She had lived a courtly life and then something had happened that tossed her out into the world and like him she was surviving. He had thought when he'd first seen her that perhaps Sesshomaru had rejected his hanyou daughter and tossed Rin out with her new baby—but everything about Saya screamed otherwise. She had not been purposefull abandoned, just as Inuyasha hadn't. That meant something had happened to Rin or Sesshomaru or both of them to stop them from saving Saya.

Saya looked like his older brother, but watching her Inuyasha saw only himself and his own past.

Inuyasha's ears drooped and he reached out slowly to his niece. "Hey—stop crying. You're okay, got that? If I can I am going to take you home, I promise Saya."

The girl stared up at him through her tears. Her eyes brightened slightly with hope. "You'll take me home?"

"Yep," Inuyasha slowly scooped up Saya and brought her protectively into his lap. The girl was tense but she accepted his touch and pressed her face into his chest, letting her tears soak into his undershirt. "There's just one thing I have to ask you to do for me, kid," Inuyasha told her.

"What is it?" Saya asked, sniffling. Her voice was muffled against his shirt.

"Your dad doesn't like me and he might try to k—uh, hurt me when we find him. I need you to promise me that you'll tell your dad not to hurt me or anyone with me, okay?" Inuyasha tentatively touched her hair and cringed, feeling the dirt and bits of twigs and leaves caught there. "I'll be depending on you to protect me and my family. Do you understand, Saya?"

She nodded against him. "Yes."

* * *

The inuyoukai woman pushed Rin back with a sudden, violent motion. Rin's back fell against the wall behind her. The blow was hard enough to break and splinter some of the wood. Rin saw some of it float down around her. She smelled the dust and the cedary pine scent, but there was no pain from the impact, as if her skeleton and her muscles had hardened into steel. Rin stared uncomprehendingly as the inuyoukai woman glared at her from next to the bloodied bedding.

"Lady Yamome," the priestess called. "I cannot explain what has happened here. It is other worldly. This woman died after her miscarriage of a disease I have never before seen in all of my years…"

_Lady Yamome,_ Rin caught the name and recognized it. She blinked, rifling through her memory.

"Without the child she is useless to me," Yamome said, glaring at Rin. "I'll have to kill her."

Rin tensed and tried to speak again but her voice rasped and none of her words were recognizable. The priestess and the maids scurried out of the door. The sound of their footsteps, the creaking floor, the rush of their combined breathing, crushed Rin's ears. She winced, making the mistake of closing her eyes and losing sight of Yamome.

Yamome rushed her and grabbed Rin by the neck, hauling her high into the air. Rin opened her eyes wide in shock as she realized that Yamome was choking her. The plae green eyes stared up into hers, hard and merciless. The inuyoukai woman shook her head."I don't know how you managed to smell and appear as an inuyoukai, but this is the end of you now…" Yamome used her free hand to reach inside her robes and pull out a small, shining dagger.

Rin kicked at the shine and Yamome growled with frustration as the dagger flew from her hands and clattered to the floor across the room. While Yamome was briefly distracted by watching the dagger fly through the air and slide over the floor, Rin slashed and hit on Yamome's arm, the one that was choking her.

Blood spurted into the air, a hard and metallic smell. It wasn't the scent of a human woman's blood, but rather of Yamome's. As Yamome released her, crying out with surprise and pain, Rin found herself free and—_strong._ Her limbs didn't shake; her eyesight was clear and sharp. Her balance shoud've been impaired by the short drop but she didn't wobble at all. She caught her breath almost immediately. Her sharp ears could pick out Yamome's heart beat as well as her own. Both beats were relatively slow, as if they were at rest and calm. _As if this wasn't a physical strain at all._

Rin darted away. She was panicked but her feet were sure and confident. The room blurred briefly as she ran for where the dagger had landed—and reached it within a single second. _Too fast,_ her brain screamed, reeling.

Yamome was there too, snarling as she slashed at Rin's wrists. Rin felt Yamome's claws slash her forearm. She saw the spurt of her red blood and the scent reached her, metallic and strong—_and not human._ Rin had never picked up a specific scent as being _human_ before, but she had just scented Yamome's blood and it was an unquestionable fact that Rin's blood had the same twang as Yamome's. It was a different scent from the stink of the blood that she had lost on the bedding during her miscarriage.

_I changed…_

"_This is our last gift to you Lady Rin. It is your destiny, your rebirth."_ The voice of the monk Kokoro echoed in her ears. The colors of the inuyoukai spirits flashed before her eyelids: gold, pink, green, and blue. They had spun directly over her, fusing into a white light that had swallowed her whole.

The revelation was torn away from her as Yamome let out a high pitched howl and kicked her in the stomach. Rin skidded backward and felt, for the first time, her heart pick up speed just a little. She saw the wound on her forearm bleeding but felt almost no pain, just a faint stinging.

Yamome screamed and hurled herself after Rin at a full charge. Rin lifted her hand, positioning the dagger as Yamome's hurtled closer. She pivoted to avoid Yamome's impact and lashed out with the dagger. Yamome screamed and jumped backward, smashing into yet another wall. The wood splintered and the paper tore. Someone screamed from out in the hallway and both Yamome and Rin cringed at the unexpected loudness of the sound.

"What are you?" Yamome demanded of Rin, curlingher lip in a snarl as she held her side where Rin had sliced her. "You cannot be an inuyoukai. Jishin told me you were nothing but a weak human!"

"_You do not kill a goddess; you kill her believers, for they are the true source of her power. If you can kill Lord Kanseninu and Lady Yamome, Jishin's plot will fall apart. Without someone to serve, Jishin will lose her power."_ Kokoro's words passed through Rin's mind as if the monk were at her side, instructing her. Rin's hand tightened on the dagger.

"Where am I?" she asked Yamome.

Yamome's snarl increased, becoming almost a sick, violent smile. Without answering Rin at all, Yamome dashed forward. Rin caught the red glowing in her pupils and felt a strange ripple pass through her body, making her warm with a power she didn't understand. Yamome collided with her and they fell backward together, tumbling and rolling and growling. They crashed into the wall behind Rin and it gave way, tumbling in around them and allowing them to spill into the next room.

As they tumbled Rin lost her grip on the dagger. Yamome saw it and pushed Rin away from her, scrambling for the weapon.

Rin didn't think, she acted on instinct. Yamome was a few short feet away from her, reaching for the dagger with her back turned to her. Rin lunged for Yamome's legs and slashed with her hands and fingernails—but her nails had hardened now into little points like steel. Rin cut Yamome's Achilles tendons and the inuyoukai woman cried out with alarm just as her hand closed around the dagger. She fell, unable to support herself on her feet any longer.

Yamome turned, using her arms, and tried to rush Rin by propelling herself with her knees. Her feet dangled uselessly. Her socks had been white before Rin's attack, but now they were swiftly becoming bright red with her blood. Her eyes glowed with a furious red. "You bitch!"

Unlike in humans where the slash to the Achilles tendon left the person an invalid for life, it was not a life sentence for Yamome. In a few days her tendons would heal completely without even a scar, but for the time being Rin had rendered her immobile.

In a final moment of frustration, Yamome screeched and threw the dagger, aiming for Rin's head. Rin dodged the attack, letting it pass through the paper screen wall. Rin followed the dagger, bursting through the door without tripping. The dust and scent of wood and paper tickled her nose and made her cough.

From in the room she heard Yamome howling, crying out for help. Rin turned her back on the room and hurried down the hall. Maids and servants gawked at her and avoided her path. In her blood-drenched robes Rin was a strange, frightful apparition. Passing by some of the human servants, Rin realized that she was _taller._ As a human woman Rin had been of an average height, dwarfed by Sesshomaru and outsized by regular Japanese men by at least several inches. Now she was equal in height to many of the human men she passed.

With a jolt she also realized that she had thought of Yamome as _small_ because she was the same height as Rin was. Amongst inuyoukai that would have been very small, but Rin had made the judgement not realizing that her own dimensions had changed radically.

She reached a room that smelled of oils, fresh water, soaps and perfumes. It was a bathhouse inside the castle. Rin stepped inside and felt the steam hit her cheeks, moist and hot. The humans inside were men—this was the men's bathhouse. The scent of the human men made Rin's stomach twist unpleasantly. She frowned and averted her eyes when the men looked up and gawked at her. She was covered in the blood of her miscarriage. She was unclean.

But the men were bowing to her and muttering apologies. They scrambled to hide their nakedness, tossing on robes and wrapping towels around their guts. Rin recalled again: _I am not human._ She had the right of way suddenly because the men feared her.

The men hurried out of the room, their loose, flabby flesh jiggling in their urgency.

Unsure of herself, Rin hesitated before she stepped further inside the massive room and began searching for a robe that would suit her. Most of the robes that had been left behind were bland and gray with no design. They tied with a style that was clearly meant for a man. Rin would still stick out if she dressed in one of them—but at least she wouldn't be a big red walking beacon of bloodshed.

She picked one that had a softer fabric and shed her own dirty robe, dropping it carelessly on the floor. As she put her arms through the sleeves she caught the sight of color at her hips. More inuyoukai markings—but these weren't yellow like the ones she'd seen on her wrists. These were dark blue-purple. It was the color of Inutaisho's markings. Rin had only seen them once, in a Chinese scroll that depicted the great dog demon hundreds of years ago in his youth. _I am mismatched…_

Curioius, Rin moved to the silvered and bronzed mirrors on the other end of the bathhouse. Her footsteps slowed with alarm before she'd quite reached them.

Her long, flowing black hair was gone, vanished. Rin covered her mouth with her hands in shock, staring at her face and head in the silvered mirrors. Her hair was shorter now, only reaching her shoulders. It had changed color slightly, becoming the color that she recognized as belonging to Shimofuri. Blue-black, a rich and glossy color. Her features were mostly unchanged, a fact she was grateful for because she could still recognize the woman that stared back at her that way.

Over her cheeks Rin saw two slashes of color, turquoise. Yet unlike Shimofuri, who had three marks per side, Rin had only one, which appeared to be the pattern over her whole body. The colors of the marks changed from place to place but the jagged, single line stayed the same. It was Inutaisho's pattern, but with varied, mismatched colors.

It hit her yet again, the revelation that she just couldn't grasp: _I am not human._

She had spent much of her teen years painting her face, pretending that she was inuyoukai because she worshipped Sesshomaru and through him his kind. She longed to be counted among them, worthy and equal. Now, when that silly childish dream had come true, Rin couldn't believe it.

Tears rolled down her face as she reached up and rubbed at her face, as if trying to brush off paint. She smiled as she started to sob as her skin flushed red but the markings didn't change or dull. _I am not human._

The gift of the dead, the gift of her mysterious, impossible new life would change everything for her. She could become Sesshomaru's proper wife. She could give him uncountable pureblooded pups, sons and daughters alike. She could travel at his side without worrying that she was burdening him with her slow pace and human weakness. _I am not human._

But what of Saya? Her transformation had come too late for Saya. Saya would be forced to live as a hanyou, caught between the worlds. In losing her humanity, Rin had also lost a connection to her firstborn child.

Suddenly ashamed of her elation, Rin turned from the mirrors and darted—with her new inhuman speed—to the baths. She scrubbed at her face, her arms, and then washed her legs and her abdomen, scraping off the layers of blood. _Human blood._ She had died, the priestess and the maids had said as much. She had died and then awoken transformed. As the last of her human blood washed free of her long, strong legs, Rin remembered the spirits of her parents and wiped at her eyes as the tears threatened. She wanted to cry, mourning her loss and celebrating her gains, but she didn't have the time.

_Thank you,_ she prayed. _I have been blessed beyond anything I deserved. Thank you._

* * *

Next time since i have the chapter finished, I'll leave more snippets of it than usual.

Sesshomaru:

_Sesshomaru's hand left Hanone and moved to cover his face. It was shaking. He rubbed it over his face, pressing hard at his eyes. It was a motion that was brought on by something very foreign to him—it was human despair. "Leave me," he whispered._

Jishin:

_"I could not kill Sesshomaru until now. He is at his weakest. He is mortal. A single slash from any inuyoukai should be enough to kill him now. But there have been complications. Sesshomaru is hidden away inside the Nanka." She sneered at Sasugainu with open disgust. "He is protected by your nephew, who you were too weak to kill. And your niece the hanyou is prophesying my every move. She is a medium."_

Inuyasha:

_"Hell no," Inuyasha shouted, shaking his head. "No stories." As he spoke he felt Saya move on his back, coming to attention and almost cursed. He'd thought that Shippo, Kasai, and Koinu's singing had lulled her to sleep. Little children had a tendency to repeat things to their parents and Inuyasha didn't want Saya to return to her father rambling about Tetsusaiga, Naraku, Kikyo, or about the time when Inuyasha had cut off Sesshomaru's arm. What would little Saya think about that one?_


	17. Illusions of Power

A/N: This is a shorter chapter b/c I'm trying to cut back a little. I have a headache and I feel a bit crummy today. Ugh. I hope this brightens your Sunday and mine.

Disclaimer: I do not own them.

Last Chapter: Shimofuri and Tsuki talked, regretting that they didn't treat Amagumori better. Inuyasha and Koinu talked with Saya, making more formal introductions. Inuyasha asked Saya to promise to protect him and everyone with him from Sesshomaru in exchange for trying to help her get home. She agreed of course. Rin and Yamome fought. Upon her escape, Rin realized fully that she is no longer human.

* * *

**Illusions of Power**

Seeing her once powerful husband as a shivering, delirious mortal was disturbingly surreal, like a tear in reality. Ginrei stayed at Sesshomaru's side through the night and into the day. When he shivered fitfully and his teeth chattered, Ginrei slipped beneath the blankets and nestled close to his hot, burning skin. He quaked as if he were cold, but burned inside. Ginrei had no idea how to treat it but Sesshomaru flinched when she tried to apply cloths soaked in cold herbal water as the human maids advised.

Hanone cried and whimpered off and on, tired and disturbed by Sesshomaru's illness. She had little love for her father but seeing him as he was bothered her nonetheless. Eventually she moved in and helped care for him, pressing her little body to his and helping her mother lift Sesshomaru's head when they tried to get him to drink.

He had not come awake completely in hours, but he did manage to drink with their aid. Occasionally he stirred and moaned. Once he had rolled over and vomited, but that was the only time that Ginrei and Hanone were witness to that particular ailment. Mostly when he stirred it was for water, which he drank a lot of, and to spit out teeth. _Teeth._ He had lost his canines as well as some specialized sharp molars, the carnassials. His claws had come off and his skin had dried out. The color darkened as he lost the outer layers and new _human_ layers replaced the sloughed off ones. His markings on his cheeks and his forehead had faded, all but disappearing.

Perhaps worst of all, and aside from his tooth loss the most humiliating, was the hair loss. Sesshomaru's fine, beautiful white locks fell out. Ginrei found that after a time her jaw grew stiff from the way she made a face each time she found herself gathering up more of his lost hair.

When he began shivering once more at dawn, Ginrei crawled beneath the covers and wrapped her arms around him. She closed her eyes and felt tears of sympathy flow. She had never loved Sesshomaru but seeing the suffering that he underwent filled her with pity. As far as husbands went, especially since she had been acquired as a spoil of war with no rights, Sesshomaru had been good to her. He had never forced himself on her, and though he had suggested several times that he would take Hanone as his heir to please Rin, when Ginrei pleaded with him not to he had always granted her desire.

Hanone followed her mother's example and snuggled close to her shivering father on the opposite side. She whimpered weakly, smelling her mother's tears. Sesshomaru's scent was strange and foreign, yet she knew he was the same creature because Ginrei had told her so.

They dozed for a time while Sesshomaru's suffering went on. After a few hours Ginrei and Hanone came awake when Sesshomaru gasped, sucking hungrily on the air. His chest heaved, startling both his wife and his daughter into alertness.

"Husband," Ginrei called. She sat up and tentatively touched his face. The skin was damp and cool now, clammy.

To her surprise Sesshomaru opened his eyes suddenly and stared up at her with a cloudy, unfocused gaze. Ginrei recoiled from the sight, covering her lips with one hand to stifle her shocked inhalation.

Hanone whispered quietly, "Father?"

Sesshomaru moved, raising one arm and hand. He fumbled clumsily, blindly for Hanone's voice. His hand fell on her rather hard and Hanone made a little grunting noise, frowning with disapproval. Sesshomaru touched her hair, stroking it brusquely with his blunt fingers. His lips moved and his eyes blinked but the sound that emerged was barely recognizable as a name: "Ha-ne…"

His voice had changed pitch slightly, changing with the flesh around it. His eyes were cloudy, unable to see yet because they were _new,_ _remade._ The color had changed into a dark earthy brown.

"Husband," Ginrei called, uncertainly. "Can you see?"

He swallowed and a larger, gawkier Adam's apple bobbed up and down with the action. "Slightly."

"What has happened to you?" Ginrei asked, breathing the question.

Sesshomaru turned his head slightly and blinked his eyes, trying to see her. "What?"

She had spoken too quietly. His new ears were weak and feeble. "Never mind," she said. She watched Sesshomaru's hand moving over Hanone's hair and reverently touching her face. He couldn't see Hanone's confused, uncomfortable expression. It was not normal for _father_ to express himself in touch.

"Where is Rin?" Sesshomaru asked. His cloudy brown eyes found Ginrei's face and blinked. The pupils expanded and contracted, focusing.

"There was an earthquake at Jouka," Ginrei answered. She felt Sesshomaru's body tense at her side. "The palace was burning but I was outside…I didn't see what happened to Rin. There was a being there, an otherworldly being that claimed to be a goddess. She was the cause…"

"Saya?" Sesshomaru asked, his voice croaking.

"The earthquake opened a fissure in the ground and swallowed Hanone and Saya up. The goddess told me where Hanone was, but she didn't say anything about Saya." Ginrei stopped, fighting the nervous shaking in her limbs. "I didn't think about anything but Hanone. I'm sorry."

Sesshomaru closed his eyes and a long breath whistled out of his nose and mouth. On it Ginrei smelled a ravenous hunger but Sesshomaru made no effort to ask her for food. A long time passed in silence and Ginrei might've thought her husband had fallen asleep if not for the slight movement of his hand as it touched Hanone and by the way Sesshomaru's face twisted, contorting, manipulated by a rush of internal emotions.

Finally Sesshomaru asked, "Jouka burned? Rin was inside?"

Ginrei frowned, fighting a sudden upwelling of heavy grief as his question brought back the event fresh from her memories. Ginrei's panic for Hanone had overwhelmed all else and now she felt guilty, as if she had somehow been at fault for the disaster and for what sounded suspiciously like Rin's death. "I…I don't know. She was heading inside but I didn't see…"

Sesshomaru's hand left Hanone and moved to cover his face. It was shaking. He rubbed it over his face, pressing hard at his eyes. It was a motion that was brought on by something very foreign to him—it was human despair. "Leave me," he whispered.

"You're sick and hungry," Ginrei told him; shaking her head though he couldn't see it.

"I said leave me!" Sesshomaru tried to look at her, removing his hand from where it covered his face. Ginrei saw the brightness of his tears, the downward, trembling curl of his lips.

"Momma," Hanone whimpered, looking between Ginrei and Sesshomaru and starting to cry too. She held out her arms and clambered clumsily over Sesshomaru's body, making her father cry out faintly with alarm.

Ginrei scooped Hanone up off Sesshomaru's chest and cuddled her daughter close. "Shh, stop that, it's okay."

Sesshomaru rolled onto his side and shakily started to sit up. His robes were too large for him now; he had somehow managed to lose mass in his illness, in muscle and in height. His chest rose up and down jerkily. He moved one arm over his head and felt the sparse hair there with shaking hands.

"Leave me," he repeated his order to Ginrei. His voice had taken on a distinctly bitter sound.

"I will not abandon my husband," Ginrei told him, insistently.

"I am no longer your husband," Sesshomaru answered.

"You will be," Ginrei said, stiffly. "The illness is temporary." Shimofuri had told her briefly that he believed the transformation would not last, but seeing him in such a state made her wonder if death might've actually been preferable.

Sesshomaru lost his patience. "I said leave! Leave me!"

Staring at his pathetic form, mostly bald, covered in dried, dying skin, and thin with frail muscles and bones, Ginrei felt a mixture of grief, pity, and revulsion. She swallowed hard and, clutching Hanone close to her, got to her feet. "I won't be gone long. I will help you until you are my husband again whether you like it or not."

She left him alone inside and caught servants in the hall, asking for two meals. One with partially raw meat for Hanone and the other with easily digested rice and fish. She called for a different servant and requested a long haired wig. While she sat outside the door to the guestroom where Sesshomaru suffered alone she pretended that she couldn't hear his quiet, stifled mourning.

_He really isn't my husband,_ she thought. Becoming human had created a being that possessed Sesshomaru's name and his facial features, but so much had changed. She tried very hard not to consider the source of his grief. If Rin and Saya were dead it was partially Ginrei's fault. If she had had the presence of mind to investigate the fire in the palace she could've rescued Rin…

_I'm sorry Rin…_

* * *

In the eastern province, at the edge of the castle where Arasoizuki had once ruled with his wife Lady Yamome, a streak of movement, a gaseous ball of energy, slowed and coalesced. It lengthened, taking a distinct shape and color. When it had solidified the creature standing on the ridge overlooking the Itou was a tall, muscular young inuyoukai woman with her blue-black hair tied in a tight, neat bun atop her head. She stared with a bitter, furious snarl down at the city and the castle. It was Soeki, at last on her treacherous father's doostep, come to stop him from killing Amagumori.

She took a step forward but stopped as a black shape darted out in front of her from behind a boulder at the side of the road. Soeki sniffed at the wind, caught by surprise. There was no scent. She watched the incorporeal shape take on the proportions of a human woman, small and nonthreatening. Yet there was no scent…

"Get out of my way!" Soeki raced forward with such speed that her own image blurred.

The woman moved with her, coming to block her path.

Soeki hurtled forward without slowing down or changing direction. She collided with the scentless woman and cried out. Red light crackled around her and Soeki's muscles twitched and convulsed in a seizure. Her blue-gray eyes stared unseeingly, wide and blank.

Soeki fell onto the dust of the road, limp as a gutted fish at the scentless woman's feet.

* * *

A maid knelt at the door and called to him, "Lord Sasugainu, your daughter has come to see you."

Sasugainu looked up from where he was dictating a letter to Lord Kanseninu in the north to dismiss the maid but stopped as he saw her. She was smiling at him slyly. Her eyes glowed a bright, fiery red. She appeared human in every other way, but Sasugainu recognized Jishin's calling card.

He turned to the scribe. "We shall continue this later. Go."

The scribe, a monkey, bowed and gathered up his tools. He slipped out of the room, passing the maid without a word. Seemingly he could not see her glowing red eyes.

Sasugainu motioned at the maid. "Come in, Jishin."

The maid stepped into the room and knelt, closing the door behind her. As soon as the door had closed she began speaking without turning back to face him completely. "Soeki is coming to meet with you. She has gone to Shimofuri and seen Amagumori's condition. She has come to demand that you restore Amagumori's health."

"And what should I tell her?" Sasugainu asked. He was a puppet now, hardly a leader and even he understood that. A large part of him wanted to tell Soeki that he would save Amagumori—but the truth was that he didn't have that power. Jishin was the one holding the reins and the whip. Sasugainu was only a name, a false source of power. He was the figurehead for Jishin's plot. As Sasugainu had realized this fact he'd begun trying to take back as much control as he could. He'd spared Tsukiyume with a botched assassination. He'd insisted that Jishin not kill Shimofuri but instead write his nephew out of inheritance.

But his control was almost purely illusion. Jishin had promised him a wife, but she had let—or _used_ Soeki to take Ginrei away just as quickly as she had brought the bitch to him. As Sasugainu stared at Jishin's back in her simple maid's robes, he wondered what she had planned for Soeki now.

"The time has come that we must eliminate Sesshomaru. I will use both of your daughters, Sasugainu. Do you approve?"

"To kill that dog," Sasugainu spat, "yes. It's about time you decided to do it."

Jishin shifted, scooting around on the tatami matting to glare at him. Her eyes glowed pink rather than red and Sasugainu averted his gaze. With her eyes pink she reminded him of his dead sister, Taikokajin. The loss of his older sister still hurt him. Because he had turned his gaze away from her, Sasugainu missed the way Jishin smirked at his emotional pain. She had known that pink would elicit a negative emotional response.

"I could not kill Sesshomaru until now. He is at his weakest. He is mortal. A single slash from any inuyoukai should be enough to kill him now. But there have been complications. Sesshomaru is hidden away inside the Nanka." She sneered at Sasugainu with open disgust. "He is protected by your nephew, who you were too weak to kill. And your niece the hanyou is prophesying my every move. She is a medium."

"What are you talking about?" Sasugainu demanded.

"The hanyou has one ear in this world and the other in the land of the dead. I am not the only goddess and there are others not of this world who would try to stop me." Jishin blinked and her eye color changed, becoming a dull red like drying blood. "You must leave the castle behind and meet with her in the forest just outside. Tell Soeki that you will remove the illness from Amagumori if she goes back to the Nanka and kills Sesshomaru. Assure her that he is weak. It will be a swift death, something he hardly deserves. Remind her that it was only with Sesshomaru's help that Nishiyori's clan fell."

Sasugainu gave a dark, tense smile. "Yes, she always listened to that damned Hokinsha talk about Nishiyori. She would hold a grudge…"

"Yes, she does," Jishin said. There was a growing urgency in her words. "Now, go. She is on the path coming up from the south. Go and meet her."

Before Sasugainu could say anything else, the woman he had been speaking to dissolved into dark dust motes. Sasugainu made a face and then got to his feet. He slipped out of the room and hurried through the hallways. His servants, human and otherwise, didn't ask him where he was going. As the inuyoukai leader in residence they had little right to question his comings and goings. His retainers might've asked but they were rarely summoned. No one marked his passage.

Outside Sasugainu moved in his incorporeal form to avoid frightening the humans. He slipped out of the castle town in a whitish ball of energy that the humans took to be a strange dust devil.

On the path that led south and west in the general direction of the Nanka where Soeki had been traveling from, Sasugainu reassembled his form in half a second. He stood tall and proud. He had white hair like most of his family did—being Inutaisho's cousins after all—and green-blue eyes. The pattern on his robe was white on gray with black kanji at his right shoulder, the symbols for his name and then his father's name: Koshoshiro.

Sasugainu began walking steadily along the path. He took in the gentle breeze, searching for his daughter's scent. He found it easily and followed it. Hardly more than five minutes of walking brought him to a place where the road rose, ascending a steep hill. Sasugainu moved up it, sniffing out his daughter's scent with growing eagerness. He rehearsed his words in his mind and that little mental exercise was enough that it distracted him from the dark, blurred movement on the top of the hill until it was too late.

A shape, only a little shorter than he was, rushed at him. It was soundless. Its feet did not touch the ground. Blue-black hair flowed in the wind, wild and with little bits of dried grass and dirt caught inside the long strands.

Sasugainu looked up and tensed. He started to pivot to avoid the oncoming object—his daughter he realized with some alarm—but she anticipated his movement. They collided and Sasugainu cried out with shock and alarm as his knees gave out with sudden weakness. He fell backwards, rolling with his daughter off the path. His body smacked into a tree but Soeki pulled free before the impact. She did not move as much as she _floated._

"Soeki! What is the meaning of this?" Sasugainu demanded. He coughed, feeling strangely lightheaded.

For the first time he saw his daughter standing relatively motionlessly. Her hair was messy, as if she'd been rolling around on the ground. Her kimono, which was black with spurts of purple for plum blossoms, was covered in a layer of brown-yellow dust. She smiled down at him, a hard and ugly expression. "Father, you were going to kill Amagumori. I'm not going to let you…"

Her eyes weren't normal. Soeki had Hokinsha's blue-gray eyes, a trait she shared with Amagumori as well, but in that moment as Sasugainu stared up at her a terrible, sickening realizing hit him. Soeki's eyes were glowing pink. Her toes were hovering over the grass. She was now Soeki-Jishin. The goddess had taken his daughter and sent him out to her not to give her a new mission and a false hope of saving Amagumori—but to execute him.

His power had been an illusion the entire time. Jishin had never set out to serve him. Sasugainu had only served Jishin, never the other way around.

"Jishin!" he shouted, snarling. "You bitch!"

"This is the fate you choose, Sasugainu," the goddess spoke with Soeki's voice. She smiled almost lovingly as she raised up her arm to slash him down.

Sasugainu tensed and tried to lunge for Soeki but a pain in his chest gripped him and he coughed, rubbing at it and grimacing. For a moment it was all he could do to inhale and then exhale. His heart fluttered strangely inside his ribs and then he felt a powerful weight on his middle, pressing down. "What is…?" he choked, gasping on nothing.

Soeki sagged above him. Her feet came to rest flat on the ground. A dark cloud moved from Soeki and flowed over to Sasugainu's prone form. Jishin's voice floated through the air with it. "Go and meet the wife you so hated, Sasugainu. I no longer have any need for you."

Pain exploded inside Sasugainu's ribcage. He lifted his arms and clawed ineffectively at the cloud of darkness that hovered over his chest, pressing down on him, extinguishing the spark of life inside him. As he choked and felt his limbs growing heavier and his sight started to fail, Sasugainu focused his last strength into the only victory he felt he had over the evil goddess. "I saved Tsuki," he spat, weakly. "She will…kill…you…" he made a wet, croaking sound and his eyes clouded. His chest heaved in spurts, trying to breathe though the pressure on his heart would not cease. And then his muscles convulsed, twisting and jerking for a last final moment as his soul slipped out of his body.

The dark cloud lifted from Sasugainu a moment later, pulsing and glowing. It flowed slowly back onto Soeki and sank beneath her skin. The inuyoukai girl's body lifted again, leaving only her tiptoes touching the ground as if she had swallowed gallons of helium from party balloons. When she opened her eyes they glowed a bright, cold blue. Soeki spoke, spitting at what was left of her father, but the real speaker was Jishin, manipulating the inuyoukai girl's body. "You can't kill a goddess, fool."

She turned and floated back up to the road. On the brown-yellow dust there Soeki's feet came to rest flatly on the earth. Her legs trembled and she fell forward, breathing hard. She caught herself with her hands, keeping her head off the dirt of the road. Shakily Soeki got to her feet and felt her hair with surprise. She stared at her quivering hands in bafflement and then looked down on the castle below her.

Her eyes gradually became clouded, her mouth hung open in shock. Suddenly her face changed, growing hard and cruel. Her lips curled up in a vicious snarl. "Sesshomaru!" she howled, turning away from the Itou. She growled and raced forward. She growled to herself, making an internal vow. "I won't let you kill my big sister!"

* * *

At dawn Miroku assembled his finest slayers and approached Kagainsen's Shinto priest Mr. Yamaiko. A large number of other villagers hung along the sidelines, listening and looking on expectantly as Miroku concluded his findings and presented the head of their troublesome demon to them. His eldest son Kohimu carried it with him in a sack while Miroku regaled the priest and the villagers with a tale of their trouble in slaughtering the monster.

"First the beast slipped into your village to raid the fish hut and my associates," here Miroku gestured some ways behind him to where Inuyasha stood by stiffly. "Inuyasha and his young son Koinu laid out a trap in the hut. When the beast came she attacked Koinu, which is why he isn't with us today. I'm sure Mr. Yamaiko you will find the blood in your fish hut, and for that mess I apologize. Inuyasha pursued the demon out and herded it to myself and my sons," he motioned to Kohimu who held the bag and Tisoki who waved with a goofy smile. "Together we killed the beast."

Yamaiko thanked Miroku, bowing to him. "I will give you our agreed payment as soon as I see the head of the demon for myself…"

"Of course," Miroku said. He put his hand out and Kohimu passed him the bag. As Miroku untied the top, doing it slowly to give himself enough time to lie convincingly, he continued his story. "This demon was indeed a shape shifter. It attacked Koinu as a little girl, but after I exposed it to my spiritual power several times the beast adopted a wilder shape."

Miroku reached into the bag and pulled out a large shape the size of a bowling ball. It was flat-faced with pink skin, wide lidless blue eyes, and white fur. Yamaiko and the villagers averted their eyes or gasped, cringing with disgust. It was the head of a small monkey.

"It seems this demon was a freak of the monkey demon group. It had a perverse desire to consume fish, which outcast it from its comrades and forced it to prey upon your fine village because it is actually afraid of water, as most monkeys are…" Miroku rambled on confidently.

"I do apologize for the gruesomeness of its appearance." He slipped the head, still dripping slimy, thick blood at the base, back into the bag and began tying it. "If you wish to keep it as a souvenir you may do so…"

"No, no thank you," Yamaiko sighed, wiping his face with one hand tiredly. "You are certain this was the right demon? We will not suffer any more raids or—heaven forbid—other deaths?"

"You doubt me, Mr. Yamaiko! Must I bring out young Koinu to prove our story? You said yourself this demon was an amazing shape shifter…"

"No, I don't doubt you," Yamaiko blinked. "I just want your promise that we will not see that white haired demon girl again."

Miroku smiled, wide and open mouthed, showing every one of his teeth. "No fine sir, you will never see that demon again. She is very much dead, right here in this bag." He jiggled it for extra reassurance. "Now, about my fee…?"

Inuyasha watched the exchange with a foul, miserable sneer on his face. Halfway through the exchange of payments and goodbyes, Inuyasha lost his patience and slipped out of the village to rejoin the youngest members of the slayers where they were readying for their journey back to Kaede's old village. Shippo greeted him, asking at once whether or not the priest and the villagers had bought Miroku's story.

"Feh," Inuyasha grunted. "Those idiots would believe anything." He scanned the group, taking in Kasai where she was bundling up bedding and cooking tools. She had already prepared the group's weapons, tying up Kohimu's arrows and securing the bow to the quiver. She'd tied up Tisoki's chain, circling it around his sickle. Her own sword, Burikko, was tied to her hip. Koinu was sitting slouched near the remains of their small fire. His right shoulder was bandaged. Curled up like a dog directly next to Koinu was Saya, wrapped up in Inuyasha's haori.

Inuyasha pointed at the tiny girl and called to Koinu and Kasai. "Has she eaten?"

Koinu looked up and his ears twitched. "Yes. Should I wake her up?"

"Wait till Miroku come back. I'll carry her out of here so no one sees her."

Shippo bounded over to where Saya slept and peered down at her, cocking his head in open curiosity. "She really needs a bath but if she was clean she'd look _just like Sesshomaru."_

Inuyasha growled and began to pace impatiently. "That damn monk had better hurry his ass up. I want to get that kid back to where she belongs." _What happened to Sesshomaru? How could he loose his own daughter?_

When Miroku returned a few minutes later he was weighed down with bags of rice and barrels of produce and some heavily salted, preserved fish meat. Tisoki and Kohimu followed behind him, just as laden with the spoils of their demon conquest. Miroku divided up the spoils amongst every one of the slayers, even Koinu who was injured and Inuyasha who would be burdened with Saya.

After getting his share and fussing over Koinu while the pup slung his own load over his shoulders, Inuyasha at last turned to the strangest bit of cargo the group had: Saya. The tiny girl had woken with the group's activity but in the brightness of the daylight Koinu and Inuyasha had ordered her to stay under the red haori.

She obeyed without fighting them and remained almost motionless while she waited for the group to instruct her further. Saya had shown fear the night before when Miroku and his sons returned with the monkey's head in their bag. Not only did the scent of blood bother her, but seeing the men and older boys frightened her. She might've run but her fear was buried beneath the instinctive need to stay near Inuyasha with his scent so close to her father's—and to her own. Inuyasha and Koinu had a scent that Saya recognized as being closer to her own, the mixture of human and inuyoukai.

At last Inuyasha knelt beside his haori and lifted it, peeking underneath at the girl. Saya lied on her side with her head supported by a wadded part of the haori. Her golden eyes stared out at him from the red interior of the haori, waiting.

"Saya I need you to wrap your arms around my neck and hop onto my back but take the haori with you." When Saya's face rippled with confusion, Inuyasha clarified, "We can't let the humans in the village see you."

Saya got up and crept forward, holding the haori in position while she awkwardly crawled onto Inuyasha's back. Inuyasha took hold of her legs and guided them around his middle. "This is only for a little while, Saya," he told her. "After we get out of sight of those stupid humans you can walk if you want and I'll take the haori back."

"Yes," Saya murmured. She pressed her cheek to his back and inhaled. Relief swamped her with each breath. It was Sesshomaru's scent, though altered and unique in its own right Saya could still detect Inuyasha's strength and power, the same blood that ran in her veins and her father's too.

They set out. The day was hot and humid. Clouds moved languidly across the sky. As the slayers ascended the first massive hill that marked the end of the beach lands lying directly along the sea the clouds appeared mere inches above them, within arm's reach. Shippo stayed close to the group for once and reached for the sky, laughing and singing childish rhymes and songs.

Koinu joined Shippo in the singing and pulled Kasai along with him. The three youngest members of the slayers' group—with the exception of Saya on Inuyasha's back—were exuberant in spite of the heat, Koinu's wound, and the extra weight of Miroku's spoils that they were carrying. Shippo regaled them with rumors and stories that he'd heard while off traveling. Inevitably one of them—this time Tisoki from where he walked behind them beside Miroku and Kohimu—asked for a story from before their births. A story about the Shard hunters' journeys battling the infamous Naraku.

"Don't start Shippo," Inuyasha growled. "I'm not in the mood."

"Yes," Miroku agreed. His head was bowed and his forehead plastered with sweat. His shoulders were weighed down with his latest payment and with other weapons and supplies. "Besides, you tell most of them wrong."

"You just don't like it when I talk about your flirting!" Shippo shot back, laughing.

"It's more than that!" Inuyasha glared ahead at the kit, wishing that his hands were free to threaten him. "You put yourself in all of them when in reality you were off hiding and pissing yourself."

"I know," Kasai spoke up, "because we have a guest we should tell a story about Sesshomaru."

"Hell no," Inuyasha shouted, shaking his head. "No stories." As he spoke he felt Saya move on his back, coming to attention and almost cursed. He'd thought that Shippo, Kasai, and Koinu's singing had lulled her to sleep. Little children had a tendency to repeat things to their parents and Inuyasha didn't want Saya to return to her father rambling about Tetsusaiga, Naraku, Kikyo, or about the time when Inuyasha had cut off Sesshomaru's arm. What would little Saya think about that one?

Saya squirmed a little on his back and made a small noise that Inuyasha interpreted as a wordless request to be set down. Reluctantly Inuyasha stopped and sat on the ground, releasing Saya gently. He took back his haori and pushed his arms through the sleeves. While he tied it, not needing to look while his fingers worked, he pinned Saya with a warning glare. "Don't run off, kid."

She shook her head emphatically, making her dirty white-brown hair wriggle. For the first time Inuyasha picked out her scent, ripe even as it was with dirt and debris and the old fish smell. She was _definitely_ Sesshomaru's child, but he picked out Rin's scent too. Inuyasha watched her walk just ahead of him with a somber, pensive frown on his face.

Shippo turned back toward Saya and fell in line with her. Koinu and Kasai followed the kit, absorbing the tiny little hanyou girl into their midst like an amoeba. Saya was tense between them for a time, aware that they were taller and stronger than her and some of them—like the human Kasai—had weapons.

"What kind of story do you want to hear, Saya?" Shippo asked. To be on the same level with her, Shippo had dropped onto all four limbs. He walked with his puffy, tawny-colored tail high and erect in the air, twitching occasionally.

Inuyasha watched their interaction with a dark, ugly frown. His thoughts spun out to a story of his own, one he feared would repeat itself. The image of Koinu at no more than five years old, only a little bigger than Saya was presently, crushed in Sesshomaru's grasp, bleeding from his nose. Inuyasha could still feel his heart pick up and his palms sweat at the old memory. He could hear Akisame's wailing and terrified crying.

He watched the way Koinu moved carefully while he walked, favoring his injured shoulder. Already his family had shed blood over Saya, it was a bad sign. The longer she was with them, the greater the danger…

* * *

A/N: Ugh I feel like crap. Yucky. Next time:

_Koinu grinned, laughing mildly. "Maybe it's Lord Sesshomaru too. We don't know how he acts with her in private."_

_"With a stick up his ass," Inuyasha grumbled. "That's the only way he can act."_


	18. Widower

A/N: I think I am going to try and make shorter chapters (though this one still seemed plenty long grr). Oh and as I finished writing this chapter a depressing point came where _Return_ had only one review difference from _Innocence._ Weirdness. 164 to 163. Oh! At the end of this chapter, be on the lookout for my _Beautiful Life _snippet. I have been writing the first two chapters off and on…oh obsession. Basically all I do is write, as I think a lot of you have been realizing. The title of this chapter is going to excite a number of you, but who is the widower...? Inuyasha? Miroku? ...no...? Sasugainu? Oh wait, he died. Yeah...

Disclaimer: I do not own them.

Last Chapter: Ginrei and Hanone cared for a very miserable Sesshomaru and Ginrei told him about Jouka burning. The likely possibility that Rin and Saya are dead struck Sesshomaru like a ton of bricks to use a cliché. Jishin killed Sasugainu and sent Soeki back to kill Sess. Miroku lied to Yamaiko the priest and collected payment while Inuyasha took Saya out of the village. He's troubled by the thought that Sess will not be happy to find Saya with him.

* * *

**Widower**

_Daughter…_

Tsukiyume's ears flicked in her sleep. She was curled up beside her cousin and sister-in-law, the dying Lady Amagumori. The hanyou girl's black hair ran in long, silky waves out over the blankets and furs around her. She had been deep in dreaming for hours, sharing Amagumori's bed.

_Daughter, wake up._

It was late at night; a full day had come and gone since Shimofuri had arrived with Jaken and Sesshomaru riding on his back. Ginrei had taken over tending her sick husband, as was expected of her. Jaken, distraught and helpless in the face of his most revered master's horrible sickness, had put himself to use as Ginrei's messenger and Sesshomaru's voice. Jaken didn't demand entrance to see Sesshomaru—he understood from what he'd already seen that visitors would only embarrass and dishonor Sesshomaru—but he utilized Shimofuri's loyal kitsune servants to gain information.

It had been Jaken that had reported to Shimofuri, offering a choked message of gratitude on Sesshomaru's behalf. And with that he had also asked if there was any news of Rin or Saya. Shimofuri had answered that Tsukiyume had predicted danger for them but otherwise they knew nothing. By the time Jaken had left them, Shimofuri and his sister knew of the fire that Ginrei had witnessed at Jouka. They knew that Sesshomaru was coping with his sickness and now the high chance that his favorite mate and his firstborn daughter were both dead. Tsukiyume had drifted to sleep with Shimofuri watching over her and Amagumori, pitying Sesshomaru for all that he had lost…

_Tsukiyume!_

The hanyou girl sat up, blinking in the dark. Her eyesight wavered, blurring.

Shimofuri was on the other side of the room with his back to the bed where his wife and his sister slept. His head was lowered, his breathing deep and slow. Tsukiyume stared at him, confused. It had not been her brother's voice that had summoned her from sleep, but he was the only one present in the room aside from Amagumori who barely drew breath.

_My daughter, speak to me. _

Tsukiyume's mouth fell open in astonishment. _Father…_

Her view of Shimofuri's back, his blue-black hair flowing long and unrestrained over his shoulders, wavered and grew dark. Tsukiyume cleared her throat and whispered to the air, "Father."

By speaking aloud Tsukiyume startled her brother and she heard him move, his robes rustling as he turned to look at her. His voice was deep when he called her name but quiet, "Tsukiyume?"

Shimofuri's voice dimmed. The outside world faded from her senses. Rather than the silence of the room with the slow breathing of her sister-in-law, herself, and her brother, Tsukiyume heard a howling wind and the sound of dry, dead leaves scratching against one another. Darkness laid over her eyes but she saw shadows against the greater blackness, humanlike shapes.

_I have returned to you, yes. But I must be swift for now. You must know that Lady Rin lives. Inform Sesshomaru. She was kept in the north, but she has freed herself and heads south seeking her lover and her daughter. She has been reborn…_

"Reborn?" Tsukiyume asked the darkness and the wind that moaned in her ears.

_Yes. Send Shimofuri-sama to find her. And the hanyou girl, Sesshomaru's daughter, she lives as well. You must tell him this. He cannot cope as a mortal with his despair and his weakness. Send Aojiroi the fox to the hanyou Inuyasha on the east coast. Sesshomaru's daughter is there with him._

Tsukiyume smiled, recalling the beautiful little half demon, a lookalike to the great Sesshomaru. "So she's safe there."

_For now, yes. Go my daughter; I will speak with you again soon._

"Wait!" Tsukiyume called. She lifted her hand, fumbling toward the darkness—but her hand hit something hard and warm. The darkness lifted, seeping away swiftly. She found herself staring at Shimofuri with her hand smashed directly into his face. Her brother's blue-gray eye peered through her splayed fingers with a confused, irritable stare.

Embarrassed, Tsukiyume withdrew her hand and held it to her chest, blushing. "Sorry…"

"What happened?" Shimofuri asked.

She wasted no time in telling him what Kokoro, her father, had told her. After Shimofuri had heard the news he closed his eyes with relief. He had always liked Rin, it was the best news he'd had in some time.

"I will tell Lady Ginrei this news now. When Sesshomaru is awake I'm sure she will relate it to him." Shimofuri got to his feet and slipped silently from the room, leaving Tsukiyume alone to turn and face her dying sister-in-law all over again.

_I wish Father had come with a way to save you._ Tsukiyume laid her hand reverently over Amagumori's forehead and sighed. _Sister…_

* * *

After a day of traveling at a slower speed to accommodate young Saya, the slayers made camp near a small lake and started a fire, preparing a meal. Normally Miroku, Tisoki, and Kasai were the cooks of the group, but tonight the only female of a proper cooking age received a reprieve from her usual duties. Inuyasha ordered Kasai to take Saya to the lake and bathe her almost the moment they stopped and designated the spot as their intended campsite.

Kasai had no complaints about getting out of cooking and taking a bath. The bath, even if the water was cold, would be a joy. But when she moved to guide the little girl to the lake Saya ran from her and threw herself against Inuyasha's legs.

"What the fuck did you do to her?" Inuyasha demanded. He knelt and stroked Saya's hair, making a gentle hushing sound as his hand moved over her.

"I didn't do anything!" Kasai insisted, shaking her head. "She just ran away!"

"Don't leave me!" Saya cried, burying her head into his trouser leg.

Kasai made a face. "I would never hurt her. Maybe she just doesn't like taking baths. Kohimu was like that…"

Her brother, Kohimu, was with Miroku starting a fire. He looked up when Kasai mentioned his name and objected immediately. "Shut up, Kasai."

"Don't yell at her," Miroku muttered, "She's right, you hated your baths until you were about ten."

Embarrassed by his father's words, Kohimu fell silent though he continued to glare at Kasai.

Shippo, perched on a tree stump a few feet away shouted out his two cents. "Inuyasha! She probably wants _you_ to bathe with her."

The hanyou sputtered with horror and started pushing at Saya as if she were a leech that he'd just noticed attached to him and sucking his blood. In spite of the days Saya had spent at the village in mortal danger, and with the day of traveling throughout which Sesshomaru remained nowhere to be seen, he couldn't stop himself from imagining his older brother swooping in and lopping off his head when he caught Inuyasha peeling off Saya's filthy robe. "Like hell Shippo! She's just being shy—right kid? Or maybe you really don't like baths? Come on, Kasai won't hurt you. Go with Kasai…!"

His efforts successfully separated Saya from his pant leg. He held the little girl out from him and glared down at her. "Go with Kasai and take your bath like a good kid…"

Saya's face contorted with emotion, her chin trembled. "Uncle—please don't leave this one with humans!"

"I ain't leaving!" Inuyasha huffed. "But you need a bath kid! Remember I promised to take you to your dad? Well I keep my promises, okay?"

Tears continued to roll out of Saya's eyes and run down her cheeks, leaving tracks of smeared dirt in their wake, but as Inuyasha nudged her toward Kasai the little girl didn't resist. She sniffled and stared up at Kasai. Her small body quaked.

Kasai knelt down in front of her and slowly reached out to hold Saya's hand. "Hey—I'm only going to take you down to the water. Your uncle isn't going anywhere." She smiled faintly and moved her head, trying to catch Saya's gaze with her own. "Are you afraid of baths? Is that it? If you are it's okay, we'll make it fun. I'll tell you a story if you want, about anything."

Saya pinched her lips together and nodded without looking at Kasai directly. "This one isn't afraid of baths," she whispered. "Saya wants Uncle to come with her."

"How about a cousin?" Koinu asked, moving to stand just behind Kasai.

Inuyasha, who was watching the interaction with undisguised obsession, bristled. "Koinu! What the hell's the matter with you? _You are not bathing with them!"_

Miroku raised his head from over the campfire. "I must concur with Inuyasha on this point, Koinu."

The pup blushed and his ears flattened against his white hair. "I only asked because it would help make Saya more comfortable!"

"I think it's a great idea!" Kasai put in, smiling broadly.

"That only shows how stupid you are," Kohimu snapped, snidely.

"Shut up!" Kasai yelled. Her outburst made Saya cringe and pull away from her, turning to run back for Inuyasha, who she viewed as the safest member of the group, the one most closely related to her and with noticeable power within the group.

Before she could get there Koinu was there, laying an arm across her path. Saya stopped and blinked up at him in alarm, but her fear disappeared when she recognized him. She grabbed his arm and held onto the haori hungrily, rubbing her face on it. "Koinu," she said, recalling his name.

Koinu sat on the ground in front of her and let his cousin scramble into his lap, cuddling up against him. She smelled of dirt and the forest, and faintly, beneath those more pleasant scents, like fish and blood. "My dad and I can't bathe with you, Saya. But you can be brave and go with Kasai. She's nice; you remember she made your food last night after we rescued you from the village?"

Saya's eyes flicked to Koinu's shoulder and suddenly she whimpered and more tears spilled out of her eyes. "I made you bleed, Koinu," she observed, sniffling.

"That's nothing!" Koinu grinned brightly, his canines gleamed. "I'm strong like my dad. I've heard your dad is really powerful too. Can you be strong like him Saya?"

Saya nodded emphatically. "Yeah."

"Then why are you afraid of taking a bath with Kasai? She yells sometimes but she's really nice, I promise." He started to get up, pushing Saya off him. For a moment the little hanyou resisted and then she craned her neck around and stared back at Kasai. She released her hold on Koinu and rushed to Kasai, colliding with the older girl's legs.

"I'm ready!" Saya yelled. "This one is ready for a bath. Saya promises not to scratch anyone…"

As Kasai led Saya away down the path that meandered down to the small lake, Inuyasha moved to stand beside his son. "Address me as _father,"_ he grumbled. "Not dad next time."

Koinu lowered his head and frowned. "Sorry, Father."

"Feh," Inuyasha grunted. "That was a disaster. I don't know what to do with that kid."

"I think it's fine now," Koinu murmured.

"If we didn't get her bathed your mother would've killed me. Fucking neutered me."

"You're exaggerating," Koinu said, smirking.

"I gotta thank you, Koinu. _You_ were the one that got her to go with Kasai. You did a damned good job, a lot better than me." Inuyasha turned to peer at his son and smile lightly. Koinu averted his eyes at the compliment and muttered a quiet thank you, but Inuyasha wasn't finished. "I used to get you to do things with stupid speeches like that too. That kid reminds me of you. It must be her human half."

Koinu grinned, laughing mildly. "Maybe it's Lord Sesshomaru too. We don't know how he acts with her in private."

"With a stick up his ass," Inuyasha grumbled. "That's the only way he can act."

* * *

It was deep in the nighttime hours, in the crushing silence of the sleeping castle in the Nanka, when Shimofuri's footsteps made Ginrei sit up, stiff but weary. She held her small daughter halfway inside her robe, letting the little girl, no more than a toddler in appearance by human standards, snuggle against her and wrap her small, wet mouth around her nipples though there was no milk to be found. It was an action done as the tiny girl sought comfort and Ginrei allowed it because the motion and the sensation soothed her nerves and worry.

Ginrei had no clan remaining that could absorb her into their care should Sesshomaru die or never return to his former self. Her husband's vulnerability weighed on Ginrei, making her vulnerable through him. She was on foreign land, in a strange castle and she grew steadily tenser as she perceived her own vulnerability in a male-dominant group. Without Sesshomaru, Ginrei was exposed as was Hanone. If Hanone had been Sesshomaru's male heir Ginrei could've used her child's status as a bargaining tool to maintain the Western Lands and hold power for herself, but Hanone was a useless daughter, not even Sesshomaru's favorite…

Since Sesshomaru had awoken earlier in the day, Ginrei had secured a large screen, new robes, and a wig for her husband. She had brought in food that the humans suggested and she had tried to convince Sesshomaru to allow her to change his soiled bedding—filled with the stink of his dead skin, hair, and the feverish sweats of the night before. Sesshomaru resisted her attempts to help him. He stayed behind the screen she'd had erected to further his privacy and yelled at her when she tried to come to a place where she could interact with him and see him.

As Ginrei kept watch on him through the night she had gathered up her courage after human exhaustion had claimed him for the night and ventured beyond the screen. On the other side she saw that Sesshomaru had donned the new clothes she'd brought him, he had eaten all of the human food, and he had even pulled the awkward wig with its long black hair over his head. He was almost unrecognizable.

Ginrei had left him water and opened a window to let in the summer air outside. She expected Sesshomaru to spring awake and shout at her in fury but he didn't waken, or if he did he feigned sleep. Ginrei did not try to share his bed as she had while he shivered with fever. Now that the depths of his sickness had left him Sesshomaru spent most of his time ordering her, the maids, servants, and even Jaken and Hanone to stay away.

So it was that Ginrei shared the same room with Sesshomaru, but in reality she had left the same plane of existence. She and her husband now inhabited two very different worlds.

And then Shimofuri's footsteps came softly over the floorboards outside. Ginrei looked up at the sound and gently pushed Hanone out of her robe. The sleepy child whimpered and stared after her mother as Ginrei got to her feet and readjusted her thin summer robe to answer the door. As she faced Shimofuri through the doorway where he lingered hesitantly in the dark hall, she tried to hide her tenseness and uncertainty. How was she supposed to act now? What was her place in Shimofuri's household?

"Lord Shimofuri," she greeted him and fought the urge to bow politely to him. "What can I do for you at this late hour?"

"Nothing, Lady Ginrei," he told her and offered up a faint, forced smile. "I come with news from my sister. Tsukiyume has foreseen that Lady Rin and Sesshomaru's firstborn child are alive. I felt that your husband should be told as soon as possible, so I came to deliver the news myself before I set out to find Lady Rin."

Ginrei's mouth fell open and worked the air in surprise for a moment. She stuttered, "Rin is alive?" she shook her head and closed her eyes, trying to imagine the pain she had put Sesshomaru through unnecessarily. "I told Lord Sesshomaru about the fire too quickly. It was very foolish of me but…" Ginrei remembered the scent of the smoke, the screams as the earthquake rocked the hillside at Jouka. "Is Lady Tsukiyume absolutely certain?"

Shimofuri smiled stiffly. "I have every faith in my sister's powers. Tsukiyume can commune with the spirit of her deceased father, a monk that once served as my teacher when I was young."

Embarrassed, Ginrei dropped into a bow. "I'm very sorry for doubting the news," she murmured apologetically.

There was a long, thick silence from above her and then Shimofuri cleared his throat and spoke in a gentler, deeper tone. "Don't apologize. I should be the one apologizing to you. It's my uncle that caused all this trouble, after all. My uncle stole your daughter away, and I believe he had a hand in taking Lady Rin and the hanyou girl as well. I tolerated his behavior because he is my elder and my uncle, but in doing so I helped condemn many innocents around me." He paused and then gave a small, restrained laugh. "Your daughter is very beautiful, my lady."

Ginrei twisted around to look at her daughter. Hanone was lying splayed out over the wood floor, staring up at Shimofuri and her mother with one eye closed and the other open and glinting silver like moonlight on the surface of a glassy lake. While she watched them interact, Hanone gnawed on her long sleeve, gumming it and ripping at it with her tiny, sharp milk teeth.

"She is as beautiful as her mother," Shimofuri observed, flattering Ginrei.

The attention, although very kind, left Ginrei wary. She kept her eyes averted from the young lord. "Thank you very much, Lord Shimofuri." She feared his next words might suggest that the child might stay as a sign of the goodwill between Sesshomaru and Shimofuri's families. In the current situation Sesshomaru would be greatly indebted to Shimofuri, a fact that would never sit well with the lord of the Western Lands.

"I wonder," Shimofuri began, speaking in a light, amused tone, "Tsukiyume told me once that you were very curious about my mother, Lady Ginrei. You wanted to know about the female inuyoukai that ruled the Middle Lands. Would you like to accompany me to my study? With young Lady Hanone of course."

Ginrei glanced up at Shimofuri and tried to keep her expression blank, to avoid sharing with him how uncertain she was, how lost. It was true that before Hanone had been born and had consumed Ginrei's world, Ginrei had longed to learn something of power. Sesshomaru had offered it to her as a bribe to keep her happy, to convince her to stay alive and yield him the son he so desperately needed. Now that desire for power had waned with the day-to-day care of her child. Hanone came first, all other quests were forgotten, abandoned, or pushed aside for the time.

"Perhaps another time," she murmure,d bowing yet again. "I must stay by my husband."

Shimofuri's answer came quickly, rattled off almost as if he were embarrassed. "Yes, of course. Of course. I'm sorry—it was inappropriate of me…"

Ginrei risked peering up at him and she saw that Shimofuri's gaze was moving rapidly between her and Hanone. His face was caught between what she interpreted as frustration and a deeper emotion like sadness. Then his eyes met hers, the blue-gray to her silver, like moonlight through the last visible clouds at dusk. "I must go," he stammered. "But if you should desire it Lady Ginrei, my study and the library are all open to you. Any of the servants may escort you there and guide you to whatever subject interests you." He ducked his head awkwardly to her and pivoted away from her to walk down the hall. His footsteps thumped, the volume lessening and lessening as his distance faded.

_How strange…_she thought and then slid the door shut.

* * *

Just as Shimofuri turned his back on Ginrei to leave the Nanka for the north to rescue Rin, Tsukiyume woke into a very different kind of scene from when her father's spirit had reconnected with her. The hanyou girl had just fallen back to sleep with her hand resting over Amagumori's cold, slow-moving chest when she became dimly aware of an icy touch over her arm and her cheek. She flinched away from it and rolled away from Amagumori, blinking the sleep away.

As her senses returned, Tsukiyume saw Amagumori's body rise slowly from the bed. The hanyou girl gasped and clumsily scrambled off the bedding, staring with her orange-brown eyes in horror.

Amagumori did not move as if she had sat up and slid her legs out of the covers to stand up. Instead she levitated, pulled up as if by a giant hand by her chest. Her long white hair moved freely from the pillows like a bank of white mist. Her head lolled but her eyelids opened and the icy blue glowed just beneath the pale, dying flesh.

"Amagumori!" Tsukiyume screamed. She lunged across the bedding and pawed at her cousin's sleeping robe. Her claws shredded the edges of the fabric, tattering it. Amagumori seemed to react to her cousin's grip by moving her leg, swinging it out of Tsukiyume's immediate reach.

"No! Amagu—" but then the dying inuyoukai girl's leg swung violently backwards in a motion that was not natural. Bones cracked; tendons and muscles screamed and tore apart. Even as Tsukiyume registered this it was too late. Amagumori's calf collided with her face and the hanyou girl tumbled backwards onto the floor. She blinked up at the ceiling and sniffed blood.

Amagumori's body leveled itself, assuming a more-upright, natural position. Her feet, however, did not touch the ground. They dangled uselessly, like pendulums on a clock that had long since broken and forgotten its purpose. Amagumori's neck became rigid and lifted her head up, balancing it, but her eyes remained unseeing through their heavy lids and her arms hung slackly at her sides. She began to float over the floorboards, heading for the door.

Tsukiyume moved after her, dribbling rich red blood over the floor, the bedding, and over herself. "No!"

The hanyou girl came up behind Amagumori's legs firmly this time and wrapped her arms around her cousin's legs, pulling her toward the floor. The body sank and her feet touched the floor, pooling there like spilled paint. "Where are you going—"

Amagumori's elbow came backward and smashed into Tsukiyume's jaw. The pain was excruciating and the hanyou released her cousin, collapsing and screaming. She curled up on the floor, writhing in pain and holding her jaw. She did not see Amagumori rise back into the air and continue on her ghostly path, moving toward the nearest stairway.

It was some time before Tsukiyume could focus through her pain, and even then she was slow moving. The blow that she had received had locked her jaw, making every motion with her head and every jaw movement into an exercise in agony. She stumbled bleeding and battered toward the stairwell, following what little she could make out of Amagumori's scent through her bloodied nose. She could no longer think coherently through her pain and speaking would've been nearly impossible, but Tsukiyume knew that she had to stop Amagumori, whatever she was doing, wherever she was going.

It was not Amagumori's spirit that was in control of the dying body.

* * *

The sound of his sister's screams and the scent of her blood made Shimofuri forget his plans of finding Rin. He was already at the lowest parts of the castle, about to leave, but through the silence of the deep night, Tsukiyume's screams carried like a sonic boom. He rushed as quickly as he could without abandoning his bipedal form, flowing up the stairways, rolling through doorways. The scent of her blood drove him even more quickly and started a thick, deep growl in his chest and throat. He would find whoever it was that had threatened his sister and kill it…

He found Tsukiyume stumbling in a stairwell, clutching her cheek. Blood poured out of her nose, rushing over her fingers and dribbling down her neck. Her eyes were thick with the moisture that her terrible pain had brought on. Shimofuri wrapped his arms around her at once, instinctually protecting her even before he understood who or what had happened to harm her. Had she merely been dreaming and sleep walking? Had she fallen down the stairs?

"What happened to you, Tsuki? Are you okay?"

She stared up at him and her body shook furiously, quaking. Her jaw muscles moved and she squirmed, writhing in a fresh bout of pain. Shimofuri realized quickly that she couldn't speak. He tried to grasp her shoulders and get a better look at the injury but Tsukiyume pulled clear of him and gestured with the hand she wasn't using to clutch her injuries. She jabbed her clawed finger at the hallway beyond the stairwell they were on.

He read the gesture and the look in her eyes: _Go…_

He shook his head. "I'm not leaving you alone." Before she could struggle, Shimofuri knelt and cautiously lifted her into his arms. Her eyes were wide as she stared up at him. Tears streamed down her face, mixing with the blood from her nose as she pointed emphatically with one hand. Shimofuri followed her lead, moving as fast as he could without jostling his precious sister.

As he stepped into the hallway, Shimofuri thought he caught a scent beyond the disturbing stink of his sister's blood and tears: _Amagumori…_

_But how…?_

And then he heard a sound from around the far corner at the end of the hall, roughly the place where he had seemingly just left Ginrei, Hanone, and Sesshomaru. It was Hanone wailing in fear, crying out unintelligibly for her mother and father.

* * *

Ginrei had loosened her obi and allowed Hanone to snuggle close against her again when a cold chill passed through her body. Ginrei tensed and wrapped her arms protectively over her child. She felt her body bristling and Hanone sensed it as well, whimpering. "Momma…?"

There was a faint sound at the sliding door, clawed hands tapping on the wood border of the paper screens, trying to pull them open to gain access to the bedroom beyond. Ginrei bared her teeth in an animalistic display of fear. Clutching Hanone to her she backpedaled until her ankles bumped the screen that she'd erected for Sesshomaru.

The sliding door opened. A white shape loomed in the doorway like a ghost, hovering over the ground by six inches. Its head rolled from side to side, its eyes glowed supernaturally through the dark. As the thing moved forward, Ginrei recognized its shape as inuyoukai. The long white flow of hair and the dull, dying scent…_Amagumori?_ Ginrei had not known Shimofuri's wife, but she had known that his wife was ill and by her close blood-relative scent, Ginrei could guess who this bizarre, ghostly intruder was.

"Amagumori?" she asked, whispering the name.

The apparition raced toward her and lifted one limp, clawed hand. As Ginrei rolled away from Amagumori's path she had time to think that the girl was like a puppet on strings. She was an empty body, devoid of life, and a different spirit with its own agenda had invaded her to use that shell however it saw fit.

Amagumori collided with the screen, knocking it over on top of the sleeping Sesshomaru. Awakened beneath it by the impact, Sesshomaru stirred, crying out in alarm.

Ginrei was crouched in the far corner near the open window. Instinct propelled her to run rather than endangering Hanone. She registered only dimly the harsh sounds of her daughter's crying.

The apparition reared up violently, as if the puppeteer had tripped somewhere. Amagumori's head slammed into the ceiling, cracking the wood. Her limbs swung lifelessly with each movement her torso made. Amagumori hovered high near the ceiling, unmoving for a moment. She was positioned above the fallen screen, seemingly watching it as Sesshomaru struggled to climb out from under it.

Ginrei realized with a jolt that the puppeteer was not concerned with her or Hanone. It was here for Sesshomaru and even though it wielded a dying inuyoukai woman as a weapon, Amagumori's claws could still cut Sesshomaru's fragile mortal body in two. In that second Ginrei had a decision to make. She could engage Amagumori to protect her husband, or she could stand immobile while he was slaughtered…

The problem lied with Hanone. The child would e vulnerable no matter what decision Ginrei made. If she charged Amagumori she risked having the girl's claws rake Hanone's little body as she clung to Ginrei. If she set Hanone aside while she fought with Amagumori Hanone could become a pawn that the puppeteer could use to control Ginrei.

Sesshomaru appeared, pushing the screen violently in his anger. He was a diminished creature, a shadow of his former power, but glinting through the milky light of the moon, Ginrei saw Bakusaiga clutched in his feeble, clawless fingers.

Ginrei deposited Hanone on the ground and shouted at her, "Stay here!"

Hanone screamed once in fear as her mother rushed forward and then she obeyed, curling into a fetal position like a threatened armadillo. She peeked between her fingers and witnessed her first battle...

Ginrei collided with Amagumori when the puppet girl swooped down from the ceiling to pounce on Sesshomaru like a hungry owl. Ginrei caught the blow that Amagumori had meant for Sesshomaru. Her blood spurted into the air and she let out a snarl of pain. Amagumori's body resisted her but it was light and Ginrei pushed her soulless opponent to the opposite side of the room. They crashed into the walls, splintering the wood and scuffing the floorboards.

"Ginrei," Sesshomaru called out to her, though what he wanted to say was lost as Ginrei yelled back to him over her shoulder: "Get Hanone!"

She had no time to see whether he did as she asked. Amagumori's body pushed against her. It was not the inuyoukai girl's strength that propelled her as in a leap or a lunge. Instead it was as if Amagumori were being dragged with a magnetic force, hauled and towed by energies that weren't her own. Ginrei found herself crushed beneath that force, knocked over the floor. Her head bounced hard over the floor but Ginrei slowed her progress by digging her claws into the floor. She scraped up the wood with her claws, leaving thick bits of sawdust behind.

Amagumori wasted no more time with Ginrei. Once she had tossed Sesshomaru's wife away the soulless girl rushed toward Sesshomaru again. Her body flew sideways through space, letting her tattered sleeping robe drape open, revealing her long, pale and bone-thin legs underneath obscenely. As she came her clawed arms moved out like a praying mantis's, ready to cut Sesshomaru to pieces.

But by now he had reached Hanone and he'd knelt, awkwardly trying to pick her up…

Ginrei saw that he was defenseless and that Hanone was also in the direct line of fire. Screeching, she rushed on all-fours for Amagumori, but she would be too late…

From the sliding door, which was closer to Sesshomaru and Hanone than Ginrei was, Shimofuri leapt through and collided with his wife. Their bodies, white and blue-black, flew through the air and landed hard on the floor, skidding over it with a squeaking sound.

Ginrei didn't pause in her own lunge. She reached Sesshomaru and Hanone, panting with her worry and fumbled for Hanone—but Sesshomaru's hands on her own stopped her, claiming her attention. Her husband was wearing his black haired wig and his human eyes were brighter than she had seen them, alert with intelligence. He would have been a heartthrob of a human just as he was a magnificent inuyoukai. Ginrei's eyes were pulled away from his face as she felt something hard and cold pressed into her hands. When she looked down her mouth fell open in astonishment.

Sesshomaru had pressed Bakusaiga into her hands. The sword pulsated, recognizing her demonic power and calling out to it.

"Amagumori!" Shimofuri's shouts made both Sesshomaru and Ginrei look over to where the young husband and wife were still tangled up with one another, fighting. Amagumori had scratched Shimofuri's cheek, leaving bright trails of blood under his turquoise birthmarks. Shimofuri meanwhile was trying to restrain her without harming her. "Stop this!" he hissed.

Sesshomaru's human hands tightened on Ginrei's, closing her hands around the powerful sword. He looked her in the eye and his voice, small and weak as any mortal's and still raspy with recent sleep, and said, "Kill her."

"No!" Shimofuri howled as Amagumori at last got the upper hand. The young lord of the Middle Lands was thrown backward over the floor just as Ginrei had been. His body bounced over the floor and crashed into the screen walls. His feet punched through the decorative paper while his claws dug into the wood and his feet scrambled for purchase.

Amagumori was already rushing forward. Her body was shrouded in her white sleeping robe, slashed by Tsukiyume's claws and covered in spatter from Shimofuri and Ginrei. Her white hair flew up as if she were underwater, flowing around her face.

Ginrei did what she had to. Lurching forward she extended the sword clasped in both arms and Amagumori's own strange spirit strength rammed her body into the blade. As Bakusaiga tasted blood it warmed in Ginrei's hand and its heartbeat picked up, trying to match itself with Ginrei.

Amagumori's momentum stopped on the blade and suddenly she reared back. Her mouth fell open and her eyes sprang wide. She began to scream and choke. Her hands pawed at the sword where it was rammed into her gut. Her shrieking was hideous, blood-curdling and filled with real agony. As her blood began to spill out onto the floor the inuyoukai girl fell forward and writhed, rubbing her pale cheek in the growing darkness of her blood. Her white hair absorbed it like a sponge hungrily.

Shimofuri crossed the room to stand over her as Ginrei, repulsed by the act as she realized that the puppeteer had cruelly left the puppet in that last moment, released Bakusaiga and stumbled backward from the scene. Hanone crawled to her mother immediately, forcing her way into Ginrei's lap.

"Amagumori," Shimofuri called. His hands shook as he tried to touch her face and then, hesitantly, laid his palm over where the blade penetrated her flesh. "Amagumori—I'm sorry…"

His wife, no matter how brief she had held that title, stared up at him for a split second, registering him as her blue eyes focused, then they dulled as darkness fell over her. Her mouth moved, trying to form words and then she fell limp and lifeless for the very last time.

While all eyes lied on the dying inuyoukai girl, Sesshomaru was glad. He averted his eyes and took several deep breaths, trying to still the nausea in his gut, a nervous response to the sight of so much blood and to the nearness of death. He had never been unable to witness a death, but now he was too weak to face it without recalling the way Amagumori had been rather beautiful in life and the way she had complimented his precious Saya, saying she had a beautiful name. He could not think _what a shame,_ and move on with life. He had not known Amagumori and she had been of no close relation to him and yet he felt the weight of her loss.

He was so caught up in the unusual surge of his emotions, in the change in his reaction to death, that he didn't even consider that Bakusaiga was still imbedded in her gut…

* * *

A/N sneak peeks time! So far _Beautiful Life_ has written itself in a present/past duo. So…

Present:

_"Maybe he'll stay in touch years down the road and hope he's still on your mind."__ Her voice changed, rising in a small crescendo as she reached the main chorus, achingly beautiful. "The sun may come up and go down again. I'll still swear it's a beautiful life."_

_His hands curled into fists. Sesshomaru felt his hidden claws bite into the flesh of his own palms. It was not a beautiful life, he had learned that five hundred years ago. He had even tried to find that life again, about three hundred years ago, but __beautiful__ and __life__ were two very different words, oxymorons. They were opposites, like the word bittersweet._

Past:

_Contrary to popular belief, the infamous hanyou was not out getting laid. In fact the grand total of his sexual encounters could be counted with only two hands. Less than ten. It was a lot harder to list off his inhibitions. That would take two people and all forty digits. _

_But Kagome was patient and persistent, a good combination when it came to scraping Inuyasha out of his shell. _


	19. Three Days

A/N: Okay for this first part I get a little Biology nuts. I had trouble writing the beginning so fudging some good biology (actually it's not really fudging, what I describe up to a certain point is actually the theory for curing AIDS/HIV someday) was a way to crack my fingers to help myself get going. My mother has been sick the last three days. Something hurts in her shoulder for no reason keeping her miserable or sleeping all the time on muscle relaxants and pain meds. And here I thought I had nasty headaches! Ugh.

Another thing I did here was uncover and dust off a little of Akisame's character. She acts almost exactly like Inuyasha in _Innocence_, why? It's only a little thing really and it still shows how immature she wants to be but here she doesn't act as much like Inuyasha but like Koinu she's trying to impress and please him and she's felling the pressure, but because she's a girl and because she's got a rougher personality than Koinu, she adapted to the pressure to please Daddy a little differently. I would say her search for _self_ is ongoing and incomplete still in _Innocence_ too.

Disclaimer: Nope no owning.

Last Chapter: almost everything went down in Sihimo's castle. Tsukiyume;s father revealed that Rin and Saya are alive. Shimofuri spoke to Ginrei about it. Amagumori went nuts and went after Sess. She attacked Tsukiyume too. Shimofuri and Ginrei battled her to keep Sess alive and Sess gave Ginrei Bakusaiga to kill Amagumori. After it was done though he found that the sight of death has a much more powerful affect on him than it did before his transformation. And lastly Koinu got Saya to go take a bath with Kasai.

* * *

**Three Days**

As Jishin's hold over Amagumori slipped away with the young woman's life, the goddess felt only slight frustration at the loss. She was determined to kill Sesshomaru, but using Amagumori had only been a test. If that first, weak attempt had met with success she would've rejoiced that the greatest roadblock in her campaign in the Middle and Western Lands had at last been removed.

But Amagumori had been a test, a diversion. Tsukiyume hadn't predicted or expected the attack, and that meant that the spirit world could not oppose or predict her every movement. The night before she had flown incorporeally over the distance between the Middle Lands and the Northern Lands to visit Yamome and Kanseninu. She'd heard of the strange death and then rebirth of Rin and it troubled her.

She had known that something opposed her project with Rin already when she'd sensed the child's soul dissipate.

As a goddess of life Koeru had many powers and abilities, but as Jishin a goddess of death and illness she had restrictions set on her by an even more powerful entity: Fate. Every being had a few pathways they could follow to fulfill their set Fate. Sometimes Koeru could see with her goddess-eyes that a being had unfinished business on Earth because a child had not been born, or they had not killed someone else who was Fated to die by their hands. At other times she saw with her goddess-eyes a being that was malleable, open to manipulation. Sasugainu's whole family had been workable to her fingers, like clay. One step outside of his family, however, and she found Fate's grubbing fingers, slowing her.

Shimofuri had unborn descendants, as did Sesshomaru, Ginrei, and Rin. Jishin didn't want to kill Ginrei, and she thought she had settled Sesshomaru and Rin's Fate by offering Rin the pureblooded inuyoukai child. And she had _hoped_ that Shimofuri and Amagumori would consummate their marriage _just once_ and she could use her control over Amagumori to spawn a child immediately to solve that problem.

But none of it had worked out as she'd planned. Now Kanseninu and Yamome had told her that Rin had escaped and she was no longer human.

_The gods are toying with me, as are the spirits of the afterlife. _

She waited; incorporeally following Soeki as the inuyoukai ran, traveling toward the Nanka.

She had three days before her window of opportunity vanished for good.

Sesshomaru's vulnerability as a human would be fleeting. In hindsight Jishin realized that she should've struck at him with everything she had even while he was still degenerating, but she had chosen caution over aggression. Until the day before his illness at last finished, Sesshomaru had maintained some demonic power. If she had sent a fox assassin from the north the fox might not have succeeded against him even then. And she hadn't been willing to risk using Soeki or Amagumori at that time for similar reasons.

That left her with three days in which she could kill him and already one—albeit halfhearted—attempt had failed. On top of that the soul of the child she had called to give life to Rin's child had fled when Rin had miscarried the child. When Koeru had designed the child, drawing from Rin and Sesshomaru's DNA but rewriting the human ones into a youkai sequence, she had readily found a soul to match the body. The child was Fated to exist, meant to exist, and by creating the union, unnatural as it was, Koeru found a soul eager to fill the pureblooded child growing in Rin's womb. But with it gone, Jishin found herself indebted to Fate. Without the pureblooded child Sesshomaru and Rin both had destinies to fulfill, more children to bear.

It meant, effectively, that Jishin was breaking Fate, going straight against it now. She was committing a terrible supernatural crime as a goddess of life and death. She was breaking the predetermined cycles and dishing out death as she saw fit, rather than as Fate ordered and allowed.

But of course Fate had never seen Sesshomaru human. How could it protect Sesshomaru, lord of the west, when that creature—for only three days—did not technically exist? A mortal man now walked the earth in his place. His genes were not the same, his body was transformed. It was Jishin's most brilliant accomplishment.

After she had stolen a lock of his hair at Shimofuri and Amagumori's wedding ceremony, Jishin had taken his genes and rewritten them. In some ways it was like writing code for a computer program, though no computer would exist for another five-hundred years, or translating a novel from one language to another. If inuyoukai was French, and human was Spanish, Jishin was the translator. She transcribed Sesshomaru's genes into a human code.

But a human code meant nothing. If Jishin had been the one to scratch Sesshomaru's hand with traces of the human code she had written at the end of a knife it would have done nothing at all. Sesshomaru's body would have had no reaction to it at all.

The brilliance of her plot had been in its delivery. To force the transformation, Jishin had inserted the human replacement code into a certain type of virus that she had altered slightly to make it contagious to inuyoukai, and then she sent the fox to meet with him. All it took was a small scratch to expose his blood to the virus and the transformation took off.

First it spread around his body in the blood, imbedding itself in his cells everywhere. The first symptoms Sesshomaru would've noticed were immunological ones as his body reacted to the infection. Inuyoukai rarely, if ever got fevers, but Sesshomaru's fever would've been fierce. Jishin had remade the virus, deceiving it into becoming a brainless carrier for the genome she had created. It infected his cells all over his body as it was programmed to do, and as every virus does normally, but the DNA it deposited didn't hijack the cell and force it to make more viruses. Instead in the infected cells Jishin's human genes erased the original inuyoukai DNA and took over. The human genes ordered the cells to reproduce faster than normal. Human cells crowded and squashed the inuyoukai cells and Sesshomaru's body went haywire.

The cells that divided fastest were the blood-rich marrow. Sesshomaru's bones became human first, and then his hair and his skin. It continued on in that way until most of the inuyoukai cells with their original DNA were gone, pushed out of the way by their newer, replacement human counterparts.

For three days the transformation would seem solid, real, and unchanging. In reality, however, the virus and its human genome were already failing. The virus had not infected _every_ cell; there had never been enough of the virus to do that. The transformation had been fueled instead like a cancer. The infected cells became human and divided uncontrollably until they had pushed the inuyoukai cells nearly out of existence—but not completely. The virus had never infected Sesshomaru's immune system, and many brain and nerve cells never divided, meaning that Sesshomaru's memories and his sense of self remained intact.

Over the next three days Sesshomaru's immune system would correct the problem. Immune cells would latch onto the human cells and re-infect them with the proper DNA. The transformation would take time, but it would be far less agonizing than the degeneration into becoming a mortal. It would also, at a certain point, be _fast._

In the meantime, however, he was not Sesshomaru. He was a human with that name and Jishin hoped to take advantage of that loophole in order to kill him. Fate was not always perfect and it was not always fulfilled, just as DNA could make mistakes.

Jishin readied herself, following and occasionally manipulating Soeki's thoughts or memories to keep the inuyoukai girl heading in the right direction. With Soeki's speed and strength and her identity as a tool in her plot, Jishin was sure she would succeed. Tsukiyume's announcement about Rin meant that Shimofuri was leaving Tsukiyume and Ginrei alone to protect the very vulnerable Sesshomaru. Tsukiyume was weak as a hanyou, Jishin would use Soeki immediately to incapacitate the girl. Then she would deal with Ginrei, getting the young mother to stand aside. She would try words and reason first, and then she would use Hanone.

She would reach the Nanka castle with Soeki by noon…

* * *

Rin had left the castle in a man's bathrobe. The outside world had called to her, vast and free. Lady Yamome was inside the castle still somewhere, but the thought of running back in and killing her barely touched Rin's mind. She had shed her humanity but she wasn't foolish enough to think that she had become completely immortal with her new identity. Yamome had been born and lived her whole life as an inuyoukai. She might even have known a little of how to fight though from the way she had handled herself Rin doubted it. Though she was on a more equal footing with her enemies, Rin wasn't foolish enough to walk incautiously into their nests with overconfidence.

Aside from those uncertainties, the first priority on Rin's mind was finding Saya. She had been told that Saya was safe and with Inuyasha supposedly, but the assurances of a dead monk could hardly soothe her worries as a mother.

So she set out into lands surrounding the castle where she had awoken and found herself completely unfamiliar with them. The small town around the castle was scattered widely over a long, gradually sloping hillside. Some parts had been artificially flattened and irrigated to form rice paddies. The path moved constantly downward and Rin walked over it with bare feet. Pebbles and stones bit into her arches and between her toes, but the discomfort was far less than what Rin expected and soon she was walking with more confidence rather than planting her feet down carefully.

She passed through the villagers' homes and their huts. The peasants lived right outside the castle. If their settlement was attacked they would flee behind its protective walls to take shelter. But their homes and their livelihoods were on the other side. They were farmers and hunters, pottery workers and fisherman, bound as all humans were by the need to work a food source to ensure a future for their hungry bellies.

And now Rin was different from them at some of the most basic, physical levels. She couldn't remember her last meal but as she walked through the human settlement she felt nothing but disgust. It was not a conscious change, but one that she came to by way of her nose. Out of habit Rin wanted to eat something, but one whiff and she had to turn her face away.

The smoke from a cooking fire repulsed Rin. The scent of it was acrid and stomach churning. She passed by the cooking fires and the catches of rabbit and deer that were strung up in one marketplace though the raw scent of the blood made her stare, attracted to it even through her lingering human aversion to it. The only food that even moderately attracted her was the steamed and boiling vegetables in one family's stew.

Rin didn't linger long in the settlement. The urgent need to find Saya propelled her, along with the fear that she would be pursued by Yamome's servants. But she needed to know where she was in order to find Saya, so she approached several of the humans at the edge of the marketplace.

She had already overheard the humans chattering around her and she knew that their Japanese was slightly different from her own. Their accents and their different word choices told her that she was perhaps _very_ far away from home.

The first person she tried to speak to was a round, portly man carrying a sack of vegetables. Rin was slightly taller than him now but she hoped that the man would be accustomed to lesser youkai in his presence because of the nearness of Yamome's castle. "Sir," she gave him a little respectful bow, "Can you tell me the name of this place?"

The man made a face at her and his chubby, slimy lips fell open beneath his black mustache. "What…?" he blinked and leaned closer to her, examining her more carefully. "You're…demon…"

Rin considered denying it for a moment and then decided to press on while ignoring his observation. "Please sir, what is the name of this place? Where are we?"

The man stumbled and dropped to his knees. His sack of vegetables fell open and several cucumbers spilled out into the dust. The man stayed low on the ground before her, oblivious to his escaping produce. "Please lady, I beg your forgiveness…"

_You didn't do anything,_ Rin thought, frustrated. As a human she might've felt something like compassion for the man and she might've tried to get him up off the ground and to help him rescue his cucumbers—but she didn't have the time.

"I forgive you," she told him, sighing lightly as she stepped around him and continued on her way. She lowered her head as she felt other humans staring at her, wondering what had happened between herself and the man.

Rin had feared when she'd first entered the settlement that the humans would be terrified of her or that they would gawk and stare, making her stick out like a sore thumb, but instead they were markedly focused on their own lives. When they did look at Rin they barely noticed her. She had changed, becoming taller, but overall she walked like a human, she was dressed in a simple gray robe, and the markings on her cheeks could've been taken as a ceremonial paint. And her hair color hadn't changed much; it was still a dark, glossy black, not very different from the humans. It was easy for them to mistake her as a strange human woman as a result.

Rin hurried away from the marketplace and moved toward the fields instead. The human workers were preoccupied with their jobs and barely looked up as she passed.

At the end of one row of rice paddies, Rin saw a young woman hauling a bucket of water. Rin intercepted her and asked again where she was, what their town and what the castle was called. This time she got an answer as the woman was distracted when she answered, grunting as she lifted the water bucket. "The Northern Lands…"

Although Rin couldn't see it, the wind had brought her the scent of the sea, but as far as she knew every ocean smelled alike. What if she wasn't on the east coast? She tried to remember whether the Northern Lands spanned all of the north or if they lied more to the east of the west. To be sure she knew she would have to ask the human woman, and she might not be lucky enough to get that answer.

"We're near the sea, right? Are we on the east…?"

The woman squinted at Rin and made a face as the weight of her water bucket pulled down on her shoulder. "Yeah, head east if you want to reach the sea…"

That was as good of an answer as she was going to get. "Thank you," Rin said, bowing.

She started off; passing by the woman and her water bucket, but the woman followed her progress and shouted after her. "Who _are you?"_

Rin continued walking swiftly without bothering to give her an answer.

Time passed by easily. The road went onward, navigating the rises and falls of the hills and small mountains. Rin traveled using the wind now more than she used the path of the sun. The scent of the sea came from her left, the east. Rin kept it there to make sure she was walking parallel to it, heading south.

Inuyasha lived within a day's walk of the ocean, in a burgeoning series of villages that would one day coalesce to become the sprawling metropolitan Tokyo. Rin recalled that the land was flatter there; Inuyasha lived on the plain before the sea.

Nighttime fell, heavy and dark, but for the first few hours Rin failed to realize how late it actually was. Her eyesight had improved, allowing her to see by starlight and by the moon. She lost track of time, thinking that it had not grown dark enough for the sun to have set completely. The sky stayed tinted light blue to her new eyes and she saw her hands glow through the dark, reflecting the starlight. It was beautiful, but Rin didn't connect that this change was because her eyesight had improved. She wondered at it and then guessed that her sense of _color_ had changed instead.

When she realized how late it truly was, by catching the bright white orb of the moon peeking at her through the leaves and branches of the trees above, Rin was astonished. Time had passed by so rapidly and she wasn't fatigued. Rin considered sleeping but she felt no such desire. Her stamina was the same as it had been when she'd passed through the rice paddies in the middle of the afternoon. And there was no sign of hunger stirring in her gut.

Amazed and disturbed at once, Rin walked on over the dirt wondering what other surprised her new existence would bring.

* * *

Akisame's day began before dawn. The seven year old had made herself at home for the past few days sleeping close to her mother in the bed that normally her father would've shared instead. She didn't just sleep in the room; she also retreated to it at all hours of the day to escape Sango and Miroku's babies. With Koinu gone Akisame had no one to fuss over her and keep Masuyo and Riki away. Kagome was too busy during the day and Sango was as good as bedridden while she waited for her pregnancy to come to its much anticipated and dreaded end.

The youngest of Miroku and Sango's sons, Masuyo and Riki, weren't actually _babies_ as Akisame liked to think of them. Masuyo was the same age as Akisame at seven and Riki was four and solid on his feet, but Akisame knew that she was stronger than both of them by leaps and bounds. Though they wanted to play with her out of admiration of her strength and fascination because she was a girl younger than their mother and Kasai, Akisame resisted fiercely. She had a number of reasons, mostly out of a stubborn pride, but also because Masuyo liked to team up with Riki and play "demon slayer." She was always the demon and the boys fought _hard_ with whatever makeshift weapons they could and with their words.

Koinu had allowed them their games and he had often gone so far as to include Kasai. Akisame hated when that happened. She refused to join the games and found herself bristling as she watched her gentle brother square off against the little boys and Kasai, turning away their weapons and blows, but never their words.

The boys were only saying things in mimicry of their parents and older siblings, words like _demon_, _monster, foul beast,_ or _pest._ Yet to Akisame they had started to hurt and sting. Why was her gentle, precious brother always the demon? Because he looked like Inuyasha? If that was the case, why did they also single her out? Akisame was Kagome's lookalike except for her golden eyes. Her appearance didn't distinguish her, but Miroku and Sango's sons knew who's daughter she was and that she was part inuyoukai, who better to hone their skills on? But Akisame refused to be a part of it and although she could've masqueraded as human, she began making a point of acting differently. She wouldn't let her brother and her father suffer the prejudice, no matter how small it may have been, alone.

To avoid their games now, with even less to distract Masuyo and Riki than usual, Akisame resorted to hiding in her parents' bedroom. She knew that Masuyo and Riki would respect the bedroom because Inuyasha had shouted at them early in their stay, warning that if they trespassed he'd thrash them senseless. The harshness of his threat had stuck with them and even when they knew Akisame was inside the room they would not follow her.

It had only been four days since her father and brother left with Miroku, Kohimu, Tisoki, Kasai and Shippo, but already Sango and Kagome suspected that four days was too long. Akisame agreed with them, but she was more impatient for their return rather than concerned with what might've happened while they were away. _Nothing_ could hurt her father after all and Koinu and the others were with him so they all _had_ to be safe.

On the dawn of their fifth day of absence Masuyo and Riki broke Inuyasha's cardinal rule and rushed into the bedroom where Kagome and Akisame were sleeping. Riki was blubbering and halfway crying, Masuyo was shouting hysterically.

Kagome snapped awake immediately. "What's going on?" She rubbed her eyes as she sat up and her movements made Akisame sit up abruptly in alarm.

Masuyo grabbed at his younger brother and tried to put a hand over Riki's lips to quiet his crying to make sure Kagome would hear him when he spoke. Riki fought him and cried harder.

Kagome already had an idea of what must've happened to send them into a frenzy. "Is it your mother? Did she send you?"

Masuyo nodded. "Mother sent us, Aunt Kagome," he had to shout above Riki's crying but even then his voice was somber and serious.

Riki freed himself from Masuyo then and waved desperately for Kagome's attention. "Momma's _bleeding!_"

Kagome rubbed a hand over her face tiredly and glanced toward the shutters over her bedroom window. It was still dark outside, no light peeked in. "Okay boys, your new brother is coming," she said. "I'll need everyone's help now especially since everyone's gone." She shifted and pushed her feet over the side of the bed, planting her feet on the floor. Akisame moved out of her way and pushed herself deeper into the covers as if Kagome would forget that she was there.

Of course she didn't.

"Akisame," Kagome said, turning to look back at her daughter as she got to her feet and moved toward the door.

"Yeah?" Akisame peeked out of the covers.

""I need you to get up and calm Riki down while I talk to Aunt Sango. Can you do that?"

"Yeah," Akisame agreed, grumbling.

"Good." Kagome offered her a tired smile and then vanished into the hallway to speak with Sango.

Alone with them, Akisame made a face at Riki's continued crying. Masuyo worked to calm his brother, shushing him and then yelling at him in frustration, but his efforts met with little success.

"Hey," she barked at the four-year-old, "quit bawling, your mom's going to be fine. She's does this all the time and she has my mom with her. My mom is a magical healer and all that junk after all."

Riki shook his head violently from side to side. "No! Big Brother said Momma could die!"

"Don't listen to him, Riki," Masuyo said, frowning angrily. "How many times have I told you that Kohimu is a meanie?" Masuyo looked to Akisame and his eyebrows jerked once into his forehead, giving her a silent request for backup, "Isn't that right, Aki?"

Akisame shrugged. "Uh, sure."

"I know!" Masuyo exclaimed and clapped his hands together in a show of excitement. "Let's play _demon slayer!"_

Riki sniffled and his breathing started to slow at just the suggestion of the fun distraction. "C-can we, Masu?"

Masuyo nodded and grinned. "Sure! Aki can be the demon and you and me will be the slayers! It'll be great and Aunt Kagome will be so busy she won't ask us to do any chores…"

Riki's face was brightening by the second. "Really?"

"How about it Aki?" Masuyo asked, grinning with genuine excitement.

From inside her covers, Akisame sighed. She envisioned her father cursing: _shit. _But what she said aloud was, "Whatever." _I won't make it easy, babies._

* * *

_Demon slayer_ was supposed to be played like a war with the two different opponents, slayer and demon, facing off with one another clear and out in the open. This was how Koinu and Shippo played it with the young slayers, making it into a practice sparring match. This was _not_ how Akisame played it. She began by standing out in the front yard with them as if she were going to play it the right way, but when Masuyo led a charge at her with a long pole as a weapon, Akisame turned and ran. The game became a modified tag then where Akisame led the boys around the house and stopped to parry a few blows before running again.

When Riki and Masuyo got tired of chasing her after about an hour, Akisame told them they should try a different game. Rather than _demon slayer,_ it should be _find the demon_ because uncovering the demon was most of the work for a slayer. Masuyo didn't like the idea but Riki did. Hide and seek was still just as fun to him as any game while Masuyo was old enough to see the games as actual training, so _demon slayer_ meant a lot more to him than hide and seek by a different name.

They ended up playing it when Akisame refused to play anything else. She left Masuyo and Riki as the slayers and slipped outside of the estate's high, protective wall while they were counting. Now Riki and Masuyo would be searching the yard for her pointlessly for hours, never finding her because she had slipped out of bounds. She left the high wall behind and walked along the road leading to the village with a smug smirk on her face.

Akisame kept close to the road, picking at the grass stalks, stirring up the grasshoppers and beetles with her bare feet. When she was far enough away from her parents estate that she could no longer see the gate around it or hear Masuyo and Riki shouting, "Come out demon! Where are you, foul beast?" Akisame plopped down in the center of the dusty road and stared up at the sky, admiring the clouds. She saw a shape like the curvy-yellow cucumbers that she sometimes ate at her grandmother's house in the future. What were they called? _Bananas._

"Yum." She grinned and pawed at the clouds though her clawed fingers touched nothing but air. A dragonfly whizzed by high above, a massive black streak. Akisame licked her lips, wondering what it tasted like. Dragonflies were _hard_ to catch and she hadn't run into enough of them to get one yet.

She rolled over onto her side and closed her eyes as she pressed one ear to the ground. It was a trick Inuyasha had taught her. Horse riders made a lot of noise as they approached, it carried through the earth. Humans made less noise, but with her keen ears Akisame heard the thumps and gentle vibrations of feet. _Is that Masuyo and Riki?_ She wondered.

She received her answer no less than a second later when her father's voice cried out, "Aki!"

Terrified, Akisame hopped instantly to her feet and faced the road ahead of her, stiff with fear. She was out alone, untended, and out of sight of the estate's gate. Those were cardinal sins as far as her father was concerned. She watched her father leaping toward her, his red Fire Rat robe billowing in the wind as he came. With the curve in the road as it descended around the hillside toward the village Akisame hadn't scented her father's return with the others, and now she was going to pay for it.

Inuyasha landed in front of her and Akisame looked into his face as she started to plead for forgiveness. "Daddy—I was j—"

Inuyasha grabbed hold of her ear, striking like a snake. Akisame cried out and cringed, baring her teeth in pain. "I'll never do it again! Never!"

"That's what you said last time," Inuyasha growled. His face was stern and his ears laid flat over his hair. He released her ear but Akisame stayed where she was, cowering as if he hadn't let go at all. "Why the hell are you out here alone, Aki? What if I hadn't come along just now? Some stupid human could come along and kidnap you! How many times do I have to fuckin' repeat myself…"

"If some human took me Daddy, I'd claw his face off!" Akisame promised in a high, plaintive voice.

"Don't count on it, Aki," Inuyasha muttered and his glaring intensified. "Where are the boys? Where's your mother?"

"Aunt Sango is having her baby," Akisame murmured, staring at the ground sullenly. "I'm sorry Daddy. I had to get away from Masuyo and Riki. They always want me to be their _demon_ in their stupid game…"

"So what?" Inuyasha grunted, unimpressed. "I don't see how that means you should come out here, disobeying me and your mother, all alone and endangering yourself! Some demon could come swooping out of the sky and eat you in one gulp, Aki." He stopped, making a hard, pained face at the very thought and then he lashed out again, grabbing her hand and pulling her with him up toward the gate. "Come on, I want you to sit next to the gate after I open it and greet your brother. I've got someone I need you to help take care of…"

"What?" Akisame asked, twisting around to try and peer back along the road. She saw the other slayers walking up in the distance and realized that Inuyasha had been sent ahead for some reason. "Where are you going?" she asked.

"Inside." Inuyasha reached the gate and forcibly nudged Akisame into a place beside the gate. "Stay _right there._" He sidestepped slightly and leapt into the air, flying clear over the gate.

Alone, Akisame sighed and let her shoulders droop dejectedly. Eventually she got tired of feeling sorry for herself and sat down in the spot Inuyasha had put her in and stared out along the road, examining the approaching demon slayers, as well as Shippo and her brother and…

_Who the hell was that?_

* * *

A/N Next time:

_"This one is called Saya. This one is happy to meet you…Akisame." Saya sat up and pronounced her new cousin's name carefully, adjusting to it and committing it to memory. _

_After a few more seconds of bafflement, Akisame's shoulders relaxed and her face broke out in a smile. "You don't have any dog ears!"_


	20. What Future Awaits?

A/N: Uhh, notes for this chapter...What do I need to say...hm. It's difficult to write this sometimes because Saya is just so cute and I could write her part of the story forever (except it degrades into continuous dialogue in my head...wait, is that how you spell dialogue?? Or is it just dialog? UGH!! How can I not know this? I'm an incoming senior in COLLEGE for heaven's sake, English Writing...DUMMY Shilyn!) but there's so much happening with Shimofuri/Ginrei/Sess/Hanone/Jaken/Jishin that well you know...gotta find a balance. Le sigh. Anyway, as always I am a review whore. Read and review! (I'm even nice enough that sometimes you'll get spoilers if you have specific questions. I usually answer reviews if I get a chance.) So hope to hear from you!

Disclaimer: I do not own them

Last Chapter: Jishin revealed that she has three days to kill Sess. Rin discovered that she has little need for food and sleep, a fact that will speed her journey a lot. Sango went into labor at IY's estate. Kagome left Akisame to play with Masuyo and Riki but Aki hates being the demon in their games so she snuck off and got caught by Inuyasha who made her very sorry for it. While she waited in the spot he ordered she realized that there is another person with the slayers, her brother, and Shippo.

* * *

**What Future Awaits?**

After Inuyasha had left to rush ahead for something that Saya didn't understand, he'd left her with Koinu. Saya held her cousin's hand and hopped as she walked, trying to entertain herself. Her mind was filled with the stories that Kasai, Koinu, and Shippo had teamed up to tell her the night before. The first story had been Kasai's, told during their bath in the cold water of the lake. Saya had been fascinated by it but barely able to hear it over her own chattering teeth.

It was a story she claimed had happened just before Saya's birth. Kasai had been little older than Saya was currently at the time. It was a story about her mother and her father.

"_We were all sitting together in an inn. We were traveling home from visiting your uncle, Inuyasha. Your mother was with us. Lady Rin was very beautiful and she used to sit and listen to Aunt Kagome teach us like she was a little kid. She actually wanted to learn! My brothers still talk about that because they thought it was so strange. I think they both had a crush on her. But that night she was traveling with us and your father came…"_

Some parts of the story Saya found she could hardly believe. Her mother had run away? Her mother had been angry with her father?

But then her doubts faded as she wondered: _Is that what's going on now?_ Had something happened that her parents had become angry with her and cast her away? Saya hid her thoughts, burying them, but they wriggled in her mind like worms, trying to come to the surface.

While they'd walked Shippo had started storytelling, but because Inuyasha was listening the stories didn't involve Saya's family. Instead Shippo talked about Kohaku—Kasai, Kohimu, and Tisoki's missing uncle. That had been a dark, sad story and before Shippo had gotten far into its telling Miroku ordered the kit to stop.

So then Shippo had begun detailing the story of the first time he and Kagome had witnessed Inuyasha's night of weakness, the new moon. That story had swiftly offended Inuyasha and he'd threatened Shippo's life until the kit stopped that one too. Saya didn't know what Inuyasha's night of weakness was. Nighttime had sheltered her since she'd been separated from her parents. Was it somehow unfriendly to Inuyasha?

Three stories and only one of them was complete. Saya stared up at the beings around her, aware of a thick, rich history that she had never known and hadn't been a part of. Her fear of them, even of the humans, had faded into the background like a bad dream. As she held onto Koinu's hand she fumbled inside her robe and found the white stone that Aojiroi the fox had given her. She palmed it and closed her eyes as she thanked it for answering her wishes, even if it had done so in a roundabout way. It hadn't brought her mother or her father to her, but it had sent her uncle and her cousin Koinu after her. With them she would be safe and she could grow truly strong.

They rounded the last curve in their journey and Saya peered up at the looming gate around her uncle's estate with wide, golden eyes. Saya, having been born in the isolated Jouka Palace, had never seen a fortification of any kind before. When she had attended Shimofuri's wedding with Sesshomaru it had been in a different city, so she had seen a different assortment of architectural structures, but the wedding ceremony had taken place in an open garden. Saya had never before seen a wall or a gate. She was not used to the idea of wanting to keep something _outside_. She hadn't, until recently, known _fear._

"What is that?" Saya asked, pointing one shaky finger up at the structure.

"That's a wall," Koinu told her, blankly. His attention was distracted; his ears swiveled forward and back. Noticing this, Saya looked around trying to see more than just the gate. What had caught her cousin's eye?

"What's Aki doing there?" Shippo asked. The fox was walking just ahead of Koinu and Saya.

Kasai made a face, frowning. "I bet it's Mom."

* * *

Sango and Miroku liked to stay with Inuyasha and Kagome just before the births of most of their children because Kagome had the seemingly magical ability to bring them tiny little rocks called "pills," that could save a laboring mother's life and her strength. It was with such magical help that Sango could face birth after birth bravely, with a reduced fear for her life than many other mothers. Kagome was always glad to see Sango and Miroku as well as their children.

Inuyasha, on the other hand found their brood troubling as the numbers and ages of their boys increased. He worried about Akisame above all, but the sheer number of screaming boys always frustrated him. Yet he also _hated_ labor. The scents, the sights, the sounds. Whenever a new baby entered one of their families Inuyasha went a little crazy with worry.

One step inside his home after leaving Akisame at the gate and Inuyasha knew what was happening and how far along it was. Even if Akisame hadn't told him outside, Inuyasha recognized the radical flux of hormones, the change in the scent of Sango's sweat as her body produced different chemicals in its distress. After witnessing Kagome's labors, Inuyasha had also picked out what most of the scents meant. He knew amniotic fluid, he knew stress hormones for mother and baby, he knew the smell of the afterbirth and the distinct smell of the first milk, a substance filled with the mother's antibodies to help keep the newborn from becoming ill immediately after birth.

One inhalation and Inuyasha knew Sango's latest baby boy would arrive by nightfall. That was fast but hardly fast enough for him.

"Kagome!" he shouted, stomping in through the front door and leaving it wide open. Masuyo and Riki were outside, gawking at him as he passed by. When they started to follow him inside Inuyasha barked at them without turning to look directly at them. "Stay inside, your mother's fine. Go say hi to your dad."

Kagome appeared in the hallway outside the small room that Shippo slept in while they weren't having company. Her face was shiny with sweat, her hair frazzled. "Inuyasha," she breathed a long sigh of relief. "I'm glad to see you—is everyone okay?"

Inuyasha growled and crossed his hands over his chest irritably. "I caught Aki outside the gate without Sango's boys, just watching the clouds like a little idiot…"

Kagome blinked as she caught his insinuation. "You're saying I wasn't doing a good enough job watching them?" she asked. Her brow began to furrow with anger. She lifted her hands to let Inuyasha see her shirt and the old, torn blue jeans she'd put on. They were smeared with red patches—Sango's blood. "I've been a little busy! I checked on them a little bit ago and the boys told me they were playing hide and seek…"

The hanyou growled, caught between the legitimacy of Kagome's words and his need to correct the threat he perceived toward his daughter. "Never mind, there's more. The fox demon on the coast that we went out to kill—turns out it was Rin's kid."

"What?" Kagome blurted, "Didn't Shippo say she had a girl? How could you have—"

"Look, I got nothing," Inuyasha muttered, frowning. "All I know is that right now Koinu's outside with a kid that looks identical to my asshole brother. Her name's Saya."

Kagome shook her head, unable to comprehend what she was hearing. "But that's…"

Sango cried out from inside the bedroom, a small, low sound, strangled by the demon slayer as she fought her latest contraction. Kagome moved at once back into the room. Over her shoulder she said, "I'll be back…"

Inuyasha cringed away from the sound. Labor had always disturbed him. It was worse than fighting Naraku because at least Naraku had been physical. Inuyasha could slash Naraku, but labor was impossible for him to tackle, it always fell on the shoulders of the women. "Don't worry about it," he shouted to Kagome, though he doubted she was listening to him attentively. "I'll take care of the kids—all of them. I'll send Miroku in."

* * *

The gate opened up from the inside, and as Saya watched with her small mouth hanging open in shock, Shippo and all the humans stepped forward with a stiff urgency. Saya looked up at the monk, his sons and finally at Kasai who lingered for a moment to offer Saya and then Koinu a smile. Then she was gone with her father and her brothers, inside the looming, intimidating gate.

Saya tugged on Koinu's hand. "Is this one allowed to go after them?"

"Yeah," Koinu answered, "but I have to see what's up with Aki first." He started to move forward and then stopped and directed Saya's attention to one side of the gate. It was in shadow and Saya hadn't noticed that there was a girl sitting there, squatted in the grass. Shippo was there with her, talking and pointing back at the road, at Koinu and Saya.

"That's my little sister, Akisame," Koinu informed her, smiling broadly. "Do you want to go meet her?"

Saya cocked her head to one side, examining Koinu's sister critically. She made a face. "She doesn't look like Uncle Inuyasha."

Koinu chuckled. "I know, but she does look like our mom. You'll get to meet her too, but right now we have to start with Akisame." He tugged on her hand. "Come on, Saya."

It was not until Saya was very close to Akisame that she saw the girl had the same golden eyes as her father, her uncle, and Koinu. Relief swamped her and she grinned, finding enough courage to release Koinu's hand and fall to her knees before Akisame in the grass, bowing.

Akisame scooted away, blinking in a mixture of confusion and embarrassment. "Uh, Koinu—what's she doing?"

Koinu shrugged. "Saying hi, I think. She talks a little strange too. Dad—" he frowned as he corrected himself, "Father thinks it's what she was taught because her father is the Lord of the Western Lands."

"This one is called Saya. This one is happy to meet you…_Akisame."_ Saya sat up and pronounced her new cousin's name carefully, adjusting to it and committing it to memory.

After a few more seconds of bafflement, Akisame's shoulders relaxed and her face broke out in a smile. "You don't have any dog ears!"

Saya shook her head in agreement. "No, this one does not."

Shippo laughed, "Come on Saya, you don't have to talk like that. If you haven't noticed yet Inuyasha isn't exactly formal. In fact none of us are really."

Saya bowed. "Sorry," she murmured.

"Come on," Koinu said, moving forward to help Saya up off the ground. "Let's go inside and meet your Aunt Kagome, mine and Aki's mom…"

"Ah," Akisame hopped to her feet and intercepted her brother's hand. "Aunt Sango's having her baby, Mom's kinda busy. I think that's why Dad left me out here. He said to—"

"I left you out here because I didn't want you to move from that spot!" Inuyasha growled as he stepped around the gate and faced the three—correction, four counting Saya now—children in his immediate care. "All of you inside! Sango's new baby will be here soon but I need all of you to behave before he's born."

As Inuyasha ushered them along, passed the gate, Koinu turned and grinned at his father. "So Aunt Sango is expecting another boy then?"

Inuyasha paused, his face blanking for a moment. Finally he blustered, "Feh. You didn't hear it from me!" In the past Inuyasha had destroyed the guesswork of new babies by predicting the gender with his nose. It was a simple thing to do really. If the child was male, androgen, a male hormone was produced in large quantities and it emerged in Sango's scent. If the baby was a girl the androgen scent would be considerably less. Before Sango and Miroku and their large brood had arrived a few weeks ago with the heavily pregnant Sango, Kagome had pulled on Inuyasha's ears until he promised not to predict the child's gender aloud.

Koinu grinned widely. "Oh yes I did!"

"Whatever, just don't tell your mother." Inuyasha snatched his son by the arm and leaned closer to him to whisper, "I need you to keep a close eye on Saya. Make sure none of Miroku and Sango's kids hurt her or scare her."

Koinu nodded somberly. "Of course, Father."

* * *

Shimofuri left his castle in the Nanka solemn and stiff. Amagumori's death had slowed his departure. He had meant to leave the night before, but now he had stayed to pay his final respects to his wife. He had also sent messengers to Sasugainu's lands, to inform his uncle of his daughter's death and of the bizarre circumstances surrounding it. Sasugainu would almost certainly name him somehow at fault for Amagumori's death and by the contracts of their marriage that meant that Shimofuri could no longer take an official wife. He could no longer father legitimate heirs for the Middle Lands.

But all of that was far away from his mind. For now Shimofuri thought only of her blank, cold face, her skeletal fingers. And then, to his shame, he saw Ginrei in his mind, brilliant and powerful, vibrant and strong. He had only really seen her during her marriage to Sesshomaru four years ago where he had represented her closest kin because his father had been a direct descendent of the Nishiyori clan. In that time Ginrei had been in a drugged shock and Shimofuri had felt nothing but pity for her. Yet inside his castle she was a caring mother, a dedicated although unloved wife, and she was beautiful to Shimofuri in a way he had never experienced before…

Ginrei had come with him to mourn, as had Tsukiyume though her injuries forced her into silence. When Amagumori's body was taken away at last to be cremated, Shimofuri had found himself facing Ginrei. The inuyoukai woman stared up at him with a pained expression. Her hands were clasped before her awkwardly. She rubbed them together in nervousness and then bowed to him, apologizing clumsily for his loss. It was her fault, she had handled Sesshomaru's Bakusaiga, the weapon that had killed Amagumori.

"There's no need to apologize," Shimofuri assured her, sighing. "If I had been in your position I would have done the same. There was nothing that could've been done. At least her suffering has ended."

"She was already dying?" Ginrei asked, timidly.

"Yes," Shimofuri said, closing his eyes. "But I must go. If Lady Rin is alive I must find her and bring her to your husband."

"What of Saya?" Ginrei asked.

"I have already sent my most reliable kitsune messenger for her. Inuyasha has seen him before and so has Saya. If she is there he will take her and escort her here."

"Forgive me, I am unfamiliar with _Inuyasha._ I have never met him. Inuyasha is Lord Sesshomaru's brother, correct?" Ginrei asked, speaking slowly.

"Yes," Shimofuri answered. He had paused for a moment, taking in Ginrei's long silver hair, her fresh, clean scent…He lost his train of thoughts and the silence dragged out for a long time until Ginrei smiled lightly.

"If Saya's uncle has found her I would expect him to hold onto her rather than turning her over to a fox. If he is any kind of decent inuyoukai, I mean."

Shimofuri blinked, trying to focus back in on her words. "Ah, Inuyasha is my distant cousin as well, Lady Ginrei. But he's hanyou, not inuyoukai. He and Sesshomaru have never gotten along."

"Hanyou," Ginrei said, and she frowned. "Then he'll probably never let her go!"

Shimofuri had dismissed Ginrei's thoughts as unlikely. Inuyasha hadn't wanted Rin to stay with him, why would Saya be any different? But as he ran north it struck him that the circumstances between Rin's running away and Saya's disappearance were very different. Shimofuri didn't know how Saya had appeared on Inuyasha's doorstep, but the child surely wanted to go home and didn't know how she'd come to be there. As the days passed and there was no sign and no rumor of Rin or Sesshomaru's search for the hanyou child, Inuyasha probably suspected foul play. If Inuyasha believed Saya's parents had died—as that was the only conceivable way they would abandon her—would he turn her over to a fox claiming that he would take her to safety?

It was too late to call the fox—Aojiroi Jinsoku—back from his mission. Whatever Inuyasha's reaction to Saya, Aojiroi would uncover it.

Ginrei had returned to serve Sesshomaru and watch over Hanone as always while Shimofuri departed to search for Rin, leaving his sister in the care of the household servants. Shimofuri recalled the screen in Sesshomaru's room; the distance that he knew always existed between husband and wife there because of Rin. He felt an echo of grief in it. He had ignored Amagumori while she had been alive, embarrassed by his inability to turn down the marriage and feeling little attraction to her. Of course if he had given her a chance she could've been an excellent wife, and indeed she had served him well in spite of his negligence. The thought of conceiving children with her still disgusted him but _cousins_ were often married in the human world, the genetic distance was enough to create viable, strong children. But pushing all of it aside, Shimofuri saw the relationship between Ginrei and Sesshomaru and felt both pity and anger. How could Sesshomaru have trapped two women so cruelly? He didn't appreciate Ginrei enough, or even at all as far as Shimofuri had seen.

_Would you feel bad, Sesshomaru, if your wife died?_

He thought of Amagumori lying frozen, lifeless. Her pale face like the full moon. Then he saw Ginrei, her silver hair like moonlight, her face as delicate and beautiful as a flower blooming under the starlight. The frost had come in the night but she refused to die under Sesshomaru's cold breath. Shimofuri thought of his dead wife-cousin and of Ginrei together: _They deserve better than us…_

Fleeing north in his true form, Shimofuri ignored the gawking humans, the endless mountains and rice paddies. His thoughts chased him all the way.

* * *

When Ginrei reentered the room where she had left Sesshomaru and Hanone she was startled to hear Jaken's voice. As she closed the door she overheard the little imp giving a report to Sesshomaru where he was hidden behind the screen.

"I sent the foxes last night milord."

"Who is that at the door?" Sesshomaru asked from behind the screen. He was speaking to Jaken.

Jaken turned and bowed to Ginrei. "Lady Ginrei! How wonderful that you have returned!"

There wasn't any light shining through the screen in the afternoon hours meaning that Ginrei couldn't see Sesshomaru's shadow moving on the screen. She smelled Hanone in the room but didn't see her. "Jaken—where's Hanone?" She didn't bother with pleasantries when her daughter appeared to be missing.

"She is with me," Sesshomaru answered. His voice had changed as a human, becoming softer, almost boyish. "Hanone," he said, "go to your mother."

A little thumping sound came and Hanone toddled out from behind the shelter of the screen. She paused next to Jaken and grinned, showing her milk teeth. "Jaken!" she said.

"It's good to see you young lady," Jaken replied. In his toady way he smiled at her.

As Hanone ran forward into Ginrei's waiting arms, Jaken started rattling off his gratitude to Ginrei for her swift action in slaying Amagumori.

"If not for your strength, Lady Ginrei, that girl could've slain our lord!" He tapped his claws together and made little noises of horror at the very thought. "Allow me to express my most sincere thanks for your support of Lord Sesshomaru in this time of need."

Ginrei smiled and nodded without answering him verbally. She stroked Hanone's hand and nuzzled her daughter's neck, making the tiny girl giggle and squirm.

"Ginrei," Sesshomaru raised his voice from behind the screen, startling both the inuyoukai woman and the imp into staring at the makeshift wall, surprised but expectant.

"Yes, husband?" Ginrei got to her feet, carrying Hanone with her, and moved to sit in front of the screen next to Jaken.

There was a long pause before he spoke again and when he did the words were quiet, a little too soft. "In the event of my demise I wish to bequeath Bakusaiga to you and to Hanone."

Jaken's mouth fell open, astonished and disbelieving. "My lord! You mustn't say such things!"

Ginrei stared at the screen, longing to see the mortal man, her husband, beyond it. "I would gladly accept such a generous inheritance, Husband."

"And the Western Lands…" Sesshomaru began, stiffly, with clipped words.

Ginrei interrupted him, anticipating that he was about to will her and Hanone the entirety, or most of the Western Lands, but Ginrei couldn't aloe him to utter the words yet. "Lord Sesshomaru, please, don't say anymore."

"It is my decision to make at this time," Sesshomaru said.

"Please, just consider that perhaps Lady Rin and Saya are still living."

"What?" Jaken croaked. His eyes immediately teared up and he wiped at them as he went on, demanding an explanation. "What are you saying, my lady? I was told you saw Jouka Palace burn down with Lady Rin inside it! And Saya…"

"Lord Shimofuri came in the nighttime to tell me that his sister, Lady Tsukiyume, had a vision regarding them both. She predicted that Lady Rin is alive in the north. And little Saya is with her uncle." Ginrei smiled as she saw Jaken's mouth fall open yet again, blubbering and stammering in his bafflement. She glanced at the screen, wishing that she could see Sesshomaru's face, human as it was right now.

"That hanyou girl! If she's lying I will see to it myself that she—"

"Jaken," Sesshomaru spoke up in a thick, choked voice. "Stop."

"Lord Sesshomaru!" Jaken bowed toward the screen, prostrating himself in silent apology.

"I felt that my husband should know if he is contemplating his future that part of his family may still be living. Lord Shimofuri left to find Lady Rin in the north, and he told me that a fox that he trusts was sent to fetch Saya from Lord Inuyasha."

"Don't call him that!" Jaken squawked. "He deserves no such title! Inuyasha is an uncouth, foul-mouthed brute!"

Ginrei's expression twisted with alarm. "Is Saya not safe with him?"

"Uhh," Jaken stopped, blinking at the question. "I suppose that she _is_ safe with him, but that doesn't change the fact that he is—"

"Jaken," Sesshomaru interrupted him in a stronger voice now. "Stop speaking."

"Yes my lord!" the toad fell flat on his face in a bow before the screen.

"Ginrei," Sesshomaru called, quietly.

"Yes, Husband?"

"I am…in need of sustenance."

Ginrei interpreted that as he meant he was hungry. Sesshomaru had never requested food before, it was brought to him on occasion, but as a full grown man he was hardly eating anything. He was not accustomed to being hungry all the time so he resisted his own body's needs. Sitting behind the screen his hands were shaking with weakness, his mouth was dry and tasted foul. His stomach was hollow and foul, burning with its own unused acids.

"Of course, Husband." She released Hanone and started to get up to ask the servants for food, but Sesshomaru called her name again, stopping her short. "Yes?"

There was a bit of a pause and then Sesshomaru said, "Thank you." Although it appeared he was thanking her for the upcoming meal, Jaken and Ginrei suspected that his gratitude was more for the news, the relief she had granted him with it.

"It is nothing," Ginrei replied, smiling though he couldn't see it.

"My decision stands," Sesshomaru announced. "Bakusaiga I bequeath to you and Hanone."

Ginrei turned back to face the door, blinking rapidly as she wondered what was passing through his mind. Was his human body influencing his mind with fears of death? Had Amagumori's demise affected him? "I am honored," she said.

A moment later after Ginrei had gone, Jaken turned back to the screen and shouted at it with tears in his large, bulging yellow eyes. "Lord Sesshomaru! What has gotten into you? You're not going to…to…"

"Jaken," Sesshomaru murmured. "Send Hanone in to me."

The toad sniffled pathetically and wiped at his eyes. He glared at the little inuyoukai girl, as if taking out his frustration on her would help. "Go behind the screen to be with your father, girl!"

Hanone blinked at him, baffled by his outburst. She got to her feet and willingly did as he said, slipping around the narrow place between the wall and the screen. Inside Sesshomaru was sitting on his bedding, slouched with the black hair of his wig draped over his bare shoulders. She paused just inside the screen and sniffed at his unfamiliar scent. He was supposed to be her father but his change in behavior and his change in scent had thrown Hanone for a loop.

Sesshomaru lifted his head and motioned weakly with one arm. His daughter scampered forward and sat next to him, leaning into his skin. His body temperature was cooler than her own, his scent distinctly human. She touched his hair curiously and tried to gum it to get a taste. Sesshomaru tolerated her behavior, watching her with brown eyes. He stroked his fingers through her white hair, recalling his own, marveling at pureblooded daughter.

"Jaken," he said, closing his eyes in resignation and grief. "I am in no condition to rule the Western Lands."

"Don't say that, my lord! I am certain this condition is only temporary! There is no power short of the Shikon Jewel with the power to alter the physical state of any being permanently!"

_Fool,_ Sesshomaru thought. He saw his clawless fingers and the black hair of his wig and wondered at Jaken that he could live in some world of denial. The force existed and it had collided with him. Sesshomaru was not certain if he could live out the rest of his days as a mortal. Bakusaiga laid near his bedside, useless to him as a demon sword, but it was still sharp enough to break his skin. Seppuku, the ritual suicide to preserve one's honor—it suddenly seemed tempting to him though as an inuyoukai he had imagined such principles as petty and a useless waste.

Now…

He would never live to see Hanone grow up. Even Saya would outlive him. As a mortal he could grow old and live with Rin—_if she was alive._

_This is how she feels,_ he realized. _Waking every morning to think another day has slipped out of her grasp. _The limited existence of humankind gave them a poignancy, a beauty that was beautiful for its short life. It was something he never could've appreciated without Rin. In the blink of his eye she had grown from an orphaned child to the powerful, gorgeous female that he had educated and created. And soon she would slip away from him, into time. A thing that lingers is taken for granted; a thing that is passing is treasured.

Torn, Sesshomaru waited, considering his future darkly and wondering whether Rin and Saya were still living. Unless his powers returned Sesshomaru knew he would have to abdicate his position as Lord of the Western Lands. But who would replace him? He didn't feel that Ginrei was strong enough to hold the Western Lands together, she had no experience and although she did feel a desire for power and prestige, it was overshadowed by a simpler desire for peace and for time with Hanone. Ginrei was about her family first, she would fall victim to another leader's scheme. She would fall into disaster because she didn't know how to play the political game.

And Hanone…?

The pup stared up at him warmly with her silvered eyes, the twin streaks of white below each eye. She looked a lot like Ginrei but Sesshomaru had always sensed power within her. Yet, just as a lump of coal has no power unless it is ignited and nurtured correctly, Hanone's potential teetered. Her future was wide open. Could she make history and rule the Western Lands as its first matriarch? Once Sesshomaru's mother had ruled the Kosetsu province as a matriarch. She relinquished her power over the province to make the Western Lands whole, at last killing the long-standing tradition of a line that inherited through its daughters, not its sons. Perhaps that line had not gone extinct, just dormant. Perhaps, like the phoenix, it would rise again in Hanone to fuller, grander heights.

And that was why Sesshomaru had ordered Jaken to send messengers out to the Kosetsu, to inform his mother of his peril, of his mortal condition and his lack of a male heir. If Hanone could be powerful, it would be Sesshomaru's mother that made her that way, not Ginrei. It was a betrayal of Ginrei for him to consider such a thing, but it was the only option he saw left to him.

He traced the white streaks beneath Hanone's eyes and allowed a small smile to cross his face.

* * *

Outside the sun had just passed its zenith and was beginning to descend once more toward the western horizon. An inuyoukai woman with bluish eyes and blue-black hair stomped her way into the castle. Servants greeted her and escorted her, at her request, immediately to Tsukiyume's room. As the maids slid open the door to where Tsukiyume was sleeping fitfully in pain from her injuries, the inuyoukai woman's eyes glinted red in the darkness of her pupils.

"Leave me with my cousin, please," she ordered the servants. They left her obediently, trusting her because she was Lady Soeki, Shimofuri's dead wife's younger sister. Of course she had come to mourn with the family, to grieve her sister's passing.

As the door shut behind Soeki, her bluish eyes flushed a full crimson red and then lightened into a cherry-blossom pink. Jishin peered with her goddess-eyes through Soeki at the sleeping Tsukiyume and what she saw angered her. Fate had its fingers wrapped around Tsukiyume, her death was not open for manipulation. There were unborn children in her future, a life that extended beyond that moment in time…

_I cannot kill her, _Jishin realized, _but I can make sure that she doesn't try to stop me._

* * *

A/N: A small preview for next time:

_Koinu moved his leg, sheltering Saya. He crossed his arms and glowered down at the two young demon slayers. "Masuyo, Riki—that's enough. This isn't lesson time. She's Saya—the daughter of Lord Sesshomaru, Lord of the Western Lands. That's Father's older brother." He paused for a moment and then leaned forward, trying to intimidate them with his greater height. "She's a princess; you should treat her with some respect."_

_"Princess?" Masuyo asked, gaping. He dropped down into the dust in an uncoordinated bow and pulled Riki down with him. "My apologies, Princess!"_


	21. Mother of a Mortal

A/N: I had a lot of trouble with this chapter's name. There's a joke at the end involving Ramen, which I think everyone will love. (Seriously, I'm going to die if Saya is any cuter) and I wanted the title to tie in with that, but plot-wise this title ties in much better than something like "Saya Meets Ramen," or something.

Okay as i said in _Innocence's_ update, I am going camping tomorrow so...hope the bears don't eat me. Most of the unfriendly life outside my house thinks I taste delicious so I am a bit worried O.o

Disclaimer: I do not own them

Last Chapter: Saya had a brief meeting with Aki. Sango is expecting her baby before sundown. Shimofuri left the Nanka for the north to fetch Rin while the fox Aojiroi Jinsoku went to get Saya. Shimofuri contemplated Ginrei and Amagumori. Sesshomaru bequeathed Bakusaiga to Hanone and Ginrei and he's considering leaving Hanone as his heir, though it breaks his promise to Ginrei. Ginrei told him that Tsuki said Rin and Saya were alive. Soeki arrived at the castle and saw Tsuki. She concluded that she can't kill Tsuki, but she can keep her from interfering.

* * *

**Mother of a Mortal**

When Masuyo and Riki spotted Akisame, they surrounded her, screaming and shouting excitedly. Akisame fought them, scratching Masuyo a little by accident. The sight of his blood alarmed Akisame more than it did Masuyo. The boy shrugged off the small scratches on his arm, frowning at them while Riki held onto Akisame's waist, demanding to know how she'd gotten outside of the gate.

"I jumped over it, stupid," Akisame explained.

"That's cheating!"

"I'm the demon remember?" Akisame pushed the little boy away from her, huffing. "_Of course _I'm not going to play by the human rules."

Koinu loomed behind her and Akisame cringed, anticipating his disapproval. "Aki, can't you play nice with them?"

"Maybe _you_ like being the evil demon all the time," Akisame grumbled. "I don't, it bugs me."

Koinu sighed, "It's just a game."

"Whatever." Akisame peered past her brother and saw Saya hiding there. "How about you play with them, Brother. I'll watch her."

"Father asked me to do it."

"Does it really matter?" Akisame demanded.

"Yeah cuz you'll teach her to eat bugs," Shippo chimed in, hopping up alongside Koinu and Saya. He cleared his throat to stop Akisame from interrupting him and addressed the wide group, including Masuyo and Riki. "Inuyasha is making dinner tonight. He wants to know what kind of Ramen all of you want."

"Ninja food!" Masuyo chanted, clapping his hands together. "Shrimp flavor!"

Riki made a face as he watched his brother, contemplating. "I'm not hungry…"

"Oh yes you are," Shippo said, smirking. "I can smell it on your breath. I'll tell Inuyasha to give you chicken. Tisoki and Kohimu are eating chicken flavored and if nobody else tells me what they want I'm going to tell Inuyasha to give all of you chicken."

"I want beef!" Akisame shouted, grinning. "Beef with vegetables like Mom makes."

"Dad won't make it with vegetables," Koinu pointed out. He frowned when he looked at Shippo and saw the kit watching him, waiting expectantly. His ears drooped. "I'll have chicken I guess. I hate Ramen."

"What's _Ra-men?"_ a tiny voice peeped.

All eyes fell on Saya where she was pressed against Koinu's brown hakama pant leg. She was peeking out with only one golden eye showing and a few strands of white hair that had fallen forward. Koinu reached one hand down to her and smiled, patting her gently. "Ramen is Father—your uncle's favorite food, Saya. It's a lot of flavored noodles that taste horrible."

"Do not!" Akisame yelled.

"Mom agrees with me," Koinu retorted. His ears flattened and his blue eyes narrowed with irritation. "She says Ramen is cheap food where she comes from."

"It's magic!" Masuyo said, clapping still. "Ninja food!"

Riki stared openmouthed at Saya and pointed rudely at her. "Who's that?"

"She's a demon!" Masuyo yelled. He pointed at Saya's forehead, at the purple crescent moon and then at her white hair. "See, she doesn't look like a human, Riki. Momma told us facial markings, different hair color and eye color are…"

Koinu moved his leg, sheltering Saya. He crossed his arms and glowered down at the two young demon slayers. "Masuyo, Riki—that's enough. This isn't lesson time. She's Saya—the daughter of Lord Sesshomaru, Lord of the Western Lands. That's Father's older brother." He paused for a moment and then leaned forward, trying to intimidate them with his greater height. "She's a _princess;_ you should treat her with some respect."

"Princess?" Masuyo asked, gaping. He dropped down into the dust in an uncoordinated bow and pulled Riki down with him. "My apologies, Princess!"

Saya shifted, ducking to peek through Koinu's legs at the bowing boys. She grinned, her golden eyes twinkling. Even when they had been pointing at her and talking about her as if she weren't there, Saya hadn't been upset or frightened. She recognized the boys' features as belonging to Kasai as well and by scent she knew they were all part of the same large family. They were siblings. She had never had a brother, but Saya understood siblings.

Akisame frowned. "I wish they'd respect me like that." She glanced at Koinu and said, "I mean we're her cousins right? So that makes us like royalty too, eh?"

Koinu sighed but his posture relaxed slightly. "Not really. Father isn't royalty and neither is Mom so, no." Koinu wasn't overly familiar with the dog demon clan as it had traditionally rejected Inuyasha so the hanyou and his children had no broader knowledge of their distant, pureblooded cousins. Did one call the daughter of a ruler like Sesshomaru a princess? Koinu wasn't certain but he guessed that Saya garnered _some_ title.

Akisame huffed indignantly. "Fine."

"Okay," Shippo said, grinning. "Princess Saya—what flavor of Ramen do you want?"

Saya knew exactly what she _didn't _want. "No fish! This one does not want fish!"

Masuyo, still lowered awkwardly with his little brother Riki in the dirt, lifted his head enough to gape at the little white haired girl. "She even talks funny like a princess!"

"Cool," Shippo said, nodding. "You get chicken then. I'll tell Inuyasha it's chickens all around except for one shrimp and two beefs." The kit pivoted around and scampered away, running on a mixture of two and four legs. His puffy tail twitched up and down with each step.

* * *

Tsukiyume woke when the door to her bed chamber slid closed, grating on the floor. She blinked the fuzziness out of her eyes and smiled stiffly when she recognized Soeki. Every movement of her jaw hurt. Her tussle with Amagumori only the night before had left her barely able to speak and with a bruised nose. She sat up in bed and bowed to Soeki anyway, trying to greet her properly. "Cousin," she said, thickly.

Soeki raced forward, flowing up onto Tsukiyume's bedding. The hanyou girl made a small noise of alarm and lifted her hands, trying to defend herself, but Soeki was faster and guided by Jishin's goddess-sight. Soeki's hands closed over Tsukiyume's mouth and her head. They fell backward onto the futon and into the thick white furs. Tsukiyume's orange-brown eyes gazed up at her cousin, yawning with terror. She could not scream past Soeki's hands and one of her cousin's hands was closing around her throat, constricting her airway.

Jishin let her own essence slide forward from Soeki's hands, reaching incorporeally inside Tsukiyume's brain. She touched the sleep part of her brain, forcing the hanyou to nod off even while her body was still stiff with adrenaline. She withdrew then, vanishing back into Soeki.

Rearing back, Soeki stumbled off the futon, breathing hard. Her eyes flashed red, her clawed hands flexed, trying to form fists as powerful, aggressive hormones raced through her body. She was like a rutting bull or buck in the fall, a moose ready to charge. Her body was pumped up and ready for bloodshed. Jishin tweaked the inuyoukai girl's thoughts, guiding her hatred and violent will.

_Sesshomaru killed Amagumori, Sesshomaru killed my mother's clan, Sesshomaru killed my father…_

Soeki pressed on, following the warpath Jishin set her on, despite the fact that it made no sense at all. It was like being caught in a nonsensical nightmare, unable to escape.

She left Tsukiyume's room quietly and moved for the stairs.

* * *

Jaken had barely left the room when a new sound came over the floor, bare feet padding softly. Ginrei looked up at it, listening attentively. It was not Jaken's tread with the softness and assurance of the steps. Without a breeze to tell Ginrei of the visitor's scent and because there was no attempt at speech, Ginrei assumed it was Tsukiyume.

"Lady Tsukiyume?" she called. "You can come in. My husband is most pleased with the meal that your servants provided. I offer my thanks in his stead."

The slight tapping of claws on the door came and it slid open. Ginrei blinked, baffled by the being on the other side. "Lady Soeki?" she asked.

Soeki nodded. "I am not disturbing you, am I?"

Ginrei hesitated, uncertain. Something inside her tensed, sensing the wrongness in this latest visitor, but she paused at the chilly feeling within her. _I killed her older sister, _Ginrei realized, blinking with alarm. She stammered, "No, you're not but—what are you doing here?" She dropped the pretenses of titles for a time, too flustered by Soeki's sudden, unannounced arrival.

Soeki stepped into the room and slid the door shut behind her. "Please, Lady Ginrei. I have come to ask for your help." She fell to the floor as she spoke and bowed deeply.

"What do you need?" Ginrei asked, searching over Soeki while she was prostrating herself. The inuyoukai girl's long blue-black hair was windblown but silky with health. It flowed easily over Soeki's shoulders.

"My sister has died," Soeki said and her shoulders began to shake. "I've come from my father's residence. He has been killed." There was a pause and then Soeki shivered violently and her voice changed, darkening. "I killed him, Lady Ginrei. I killed him for his crimes against the Nishiyori clan. He killed my mother and my sis—" She cut herself off with another body-wide shudder.

Ginrei frowned, staring at the inuyoukai girl's ducked body, her long curtain of blue-black hair. "Lady Soeki," she murmured sadly, "Someone possessed your sister. She came after Lord—"

Soeki sat up then. Her blue eyes narrowed dangerously. "_You killed Big Sister!"_

Startled, Ginrei flinched backward. Her attention moved to the screen where Sesshomaru was hidden with Hanone. "Lady Soeki, please—I had no choice! Your sister was possessed! I had to protect my child," Ginrei blustered.

"But you were protecting _him_ too," Soeki growled. Her bluish eyes flicked over to the screen.

"My husband, yes," Ginrei mumbled, uncertainly. She fiddled with her hands in her lap and tried to pin down the unease that was growing within her.

"He killed the Nishiyori clan," Soeki said, her voice dropping into a low hiss, "and he killed _your_ family. But you gladly killed my sister to protect him, to protect the murderer of all your kin!"

Ginrei's face warmed, touched with guilt and shame. Her hands curled into fists. "Please Lady Soeki—If I had not slain your sister, what difference would it have made? Lady Amagumori was dying! She was possessed! She could just as easily have killed me or my daughter or Lord Shimofuri. I only did what—"

"I saved you and your daughter from my father!" Soeki shrieked, becoming hysterical. Her pupils flashed pink and then red. "Then you killed my only sister!"

"I had no choice," Ginrei murmured. Her mouth had gone dry while her palms had turned into little swamps. "I'm so sorry for your loss, Soeki. Truly I am."

Soeki sneered at her, unmoved by her apology. "If you had a sister that I could slaughter to show you how I feel…"

"I already know how you feel!" Ginrei yelled, blinking at the burning of tears behind her eyes. "All of my sisters died years ago in the war. The loss is hard, Soeki, but please…"

Behind the screen, Sesshomaru pushed Hanone off his lap. The pup resisted him, shaking her head. The sounds of her mother's voice, rising with distress, had set Hanone on edge. Out of instinct she clung to her father, though his mortal scent offered little comfort.

Sesshomaru lifted up some of the blankets from over his bedding. "Under here, Hanone," he whispered.

The little girl obeyed, scooting underneath. "Father…?" she asked in a tiny voice.

"Do not move," Sesshomaru ordered. He moved to Bakusaiga and grasped it. He adjusted his robes slightly and made a face of disgust as he touched the wig atop his head. His steps were shaky as he moved to the narrow gap between the wall and the screen. Sesshomaru pushed it open and stepped out to face Soeki and Ginrei.

The two inuyoukai craned their necks, staring at him in surprise. Sesshomaru lifted his chin up, trying to exude honor and confidence under their scrutiny. There were no marks over his cheeks, the crescent moon on his forehead had faced, peeled away. His skin had darkened, and so had his eyes.

Soeki's eyes flashed pink in the center. The goddess hiding within her paused a moment to examine her work with pleasure. Sesshomaru made a spectacular, beautiful human specimen. _A shame that he must die…_

Ginrei's gaze fell to Bakusaiga. It was useless in Sesshomaru's human hands, nothing but a blade. In Ginrei's however, it could become a weapon to repel Soeki if she decided to attack. But thinking of it made Ginrei's stomach churn. _I don't want to have both sisters' souls on my conscience. _

"He's so weak," Soeki muttered, glaring. "You should kill him, Lady Ginrei. Kill him. He holds you prisoner. The _mortal_ Sesshomaru holds you prisoner after he slaughtered your family."

"Stop it," Ginrei shouted. Her hands, clenched up into fists, shook in her lap. Her claws bit into her palms. "Killing my husband won't bring my family back! Lord Sesshomaru has promised me the Isei and Hanone is my heir—I will remake the Nishiyori clan, Soeki. Your family is gone—you can join my daughter and I in the Isei. It is the least I can do considering your sister. I would never have killed her if there had been any other choice!"

Listening to her, Sesshomaru fought the frown that tried to steal over his lips. He had only minutes ago considered taking Hanone away from Ginrei to pronounce her as _his_ heir. The heir not for Nishiyori's extinct line, but for Inutaisho's. His hands were still weak from his low blood sugar though he had just eaten. To keep his shaking hidden Sesshomaru grasped Bakusaiga with both hands. "Get out," he ordered Soeki.

Soeki's attention had never left Sesshomaru, in spite of the unbelievable offer that Ginrei was tempting her with. Her pupils expanded and contracted, flashing with tiny spurts of pink and then bright, blood red. She lifted her claws up and flexed them, preparing them for battle. "Lady Ginrei—I have come to kill Lord Sesshomaru. You may help me and avenge the death of your clan, or you can stand in my way. The choice is yours…"

Ginrei's mouth fell open, astounded. She looked between Sesshomaru and Soeki, dumbstruck. "Have you lost your mind, Soeki? Put the past behind you! Your father and Lord Shimofuri were just as much to blame as my husband!"

Soeki bared her teeth savagely as she rose to her feet. "You know that's a lie, Ginrei."

Helpless, but unwilling to flee, Sesshomaru unsheathed Bakusaiga and hefted up the heavy blade, ready to use it as a club or a broadsword. His human brown eyes moved to Ginrei briefly. "Ginrei, protect Hanone." He didn't care whether she fell for Soeki's speech, but whatever happened to him, Hanone needed protecting.

Soeki rushed forward, brandishing her claws. Sesshomaru moved Bakusaiga up and blocked her strike. A screeching sound filled the room as metal met claws. Soeki pulled back and pivoted, trying to attack his shoulder. Sesshomaru moved with her, slashing twice with Bakusaiga to keep her at bay.

Ginrei watched them, her mind boggled, her heart pounding. She thought of Hanone behind the screen, of Amagumori's body hovering through the air, and of Sesshomaru's words: _"Bakusaiga I bequeath to you and Hanone."_

Soeki's strikes, her hopping feet, were too fast for Sesshomaru's slower human reflexes and muscles. It was not long before one of Soeki's hands reached him and slashed viciously into his shoulder. The force of it sent Sesshomaru's body spinning. He crashed hard onto the floor and Bakusaiga skidded out of his hands, clattering toward the screen.

Ginrei smelled Sesshomaru's blood, saw his face clench up with pain as he gripped his wounded shoulder. Blood flowed out between his fingers and was absorbed by his robe. Hanone cried out from behind the screen, fearfully.

Soeki sprang forward, ready to tear out Sesshomaru's throat. A cruel, hard smile carved her face in half at the lips. Her eyes glowed crimson red from the pupils outward, as if her eyes were bleeding.

Ginrei charged and covered Sesshomaru's body with her own. Soeki's strike slashed Ginrei's back instead, ripping apart her obi and tearing into the skin just below her shoulders. Ignoring her pain and the blood that she felt rising out of the wound to flow over her back and spatter onto the floor, Ginrei screamed, "Stop this Soeki! I won't let you kill him!"

"What a shame," Soeki said, speaking in an unnaturally deep voice. "I will have to kill you then too!"

Before she could comprehend what was happening, Soeki had snatched Ginrei's hair and then her neck. Ginrei felt her airway closing under Soeki's hold. Dizziness swarmed in her head. Ginrei felt Soeki's arms tense, preparing to toss her away across the room so that she could continue her assault on Sesshomaru. Ginrei closed her clawed hands over Soeki's arms and dug her feet into the wooden floor.

Sesshomaru stumbled away from them, clutching his shoulder and baring his fangless teeth. He reached for Bakusaiga and called Ginrei's name in a croaking voice.

Ginrei flung herself to one side and rolled, taking Soeki with her. The two inuyoukai woman tussled, grunting and growling. Ginrei cut up Soeki's forearms with her claws. Soeki slashed viciously for Ginrei's throat but somehow Ginrei always managed to maneuver wildly away, avoiding a killing blow. The two women left streaks of blood in their wake.

Finally Ginrei, older and with more training, got the upper hand. She pinned Soeki's hands down with her own and perched on top of her, using her weight to hold her down. Breathing hard and bleeding, Ginrei bared her teeth at her opponent. "Stop this madness and leave, Soeki!"

Their faces were only about a foot apart. The opening was there. Soeki had one last weapon that she could use to free herself. The inuyoukai girl would not have taken it, even crazed with Jishin's influence the girl knew when she was beaten and she would've left—but Jishin had complete control over her.

As Ginrei stared down at Soeki, waiting for her to give in, the other inuyoukai's eyes changed as her face slackened. Her eyes took on a reddish glow. Ginrei blinked down at her, perplexed. She started to open her mouth to speak but then Soeki raised her head from the floor. Her mouth loomed wide like a striking snake's. She bit Ginrei in the throat and clamped down hard.

Ginrei cried out, gasping. She pulled away, slashing at Soeki in the face. Ginrei collapsed as soon as Soeki released her, pawing at her neck, as the torn flesh there where her blood was bubbling up and spilling out. It was not a fatal injury for an inuyoukai, but it was substantial. Her throat had nearly been ripped out. Ginrei was distracted as she fought to clamp her hands around the wound, stifling it with pressure to staunch the blood flow.

There was plenty of time for Soeki to rise to her feet, wiping at her mouth, and stare down at the doomed Sesshomaru with a sick, amused smile. Her eyes widened and colored themselves completely red now.

Before she could take a step closer to him, the door to the room opened clatteringly. Soeki whirled to face it, snarling. She raced for the door, lifting her hand up in the air to cut the intruder—probably a maid—into tiny bits.

A spectral, ghostly green light appeared in the doorway. A microsecond later something like a snake, long and flexible, flew out. It coiled with a snap around one of Soeki's wrists. The thing tugged and effortlessly tossed Soeki to the floor. Soeki howled as she fell and scrabbled at the floorboards like an animal.

Sesshomaru, still holding Bakusaiga with one hand and clutching his wounded shoulder with the other, started to get to his feet. He lifted his sword up as he faced the newcomer in the door, though he already knew who it was—even without his sense of smell. "Mother…"

An inuyoukai woman stepped through the door. She wore a small smirk on her face; her golden eyes were narrowed with amusement. One hand was held out with the fingers pointed, controlling the spectral energy of the green whip—so like Sesshomaru's own—that had stopped and now held Soeki in place on the ground. The other hand was hidden in her massive, flowing sleeves and the gigantic, billowing white fluff on her shoulders. She stared at her son and the smirk increased.

"I wonder," she murmured, "Sesshomaru, if I had let you die, where would your spirit go? To the human's hell or to the afterlife of the youkai to join your father?"

"Mother," Sesshomaru addressed her, grunting with pain. It was too quick, Sesshomaru realized, for her to have come in response to the messengers he'd sent via Jaken. Those foxes would've first had to find her palace, and then the chances of her actually being there were slim. They were probably still searching for her. If the messengers had not given her the information, _who had?_

Soeki howled with frustration and sat up, pulling against the restraint of the whip. It was toxic, burning into her. Her wrist smoked. Soeki clawed at the whip, trying to free herself.

Sesshomaru's mother turned her head marginally while her eyes moved to stare down at the inuyoukai girl that she had trapped. Her amusement vanished as her face took on a somber look. "How cowardly indeed, Jishin."

Soeki lifted her head, snarling through her blue-black hair. Her lips curled. "I'll kill you too!"

"I think not," Sesshomaru's mother said. With the hand that wasn't controlling the whip she reached under the massive white fur at her shoulders and pulled out a small obsidian blade. "Goodbye, Jishin. What a shame this young bitch must die with you."

Soeki sneered and pulled violently on the whip, twisting and turning. Her movement did little to free her and Sesshomaru's mother had little trouble landing the vital blow that she needed. She let the obsidian blade fly and with perfect precision it pierced Soeki's left eye, burying itself in her brain. The inuyoukai girl's body grew stiff for a split second, convulsing wildly, then she fell forward, limp and dead.

Sesshomaru's mother flicked her wrist once and the spectral whip released the dead girl's wrist, flowing back up into her fingers. After a moment she shook her hand, letting it fall back into her sleeve where it was hidden and covered. She toured her gaze around the room and sniffed audibly once. Her smile returned and her eyes flew to Sesshomaru. "At least you have managed to keep my granddaughter alive!"

Ginrei shakily hauled herself to her feet. She clutched her throat with both hands. Her face was pale; her kimono was falling open because her obi had been shredded. Blood ran down her chest and her back from both her injuries. Through the stink of all of the blood in the room, Soeki, Sesshomaru's, and her own, Ginrei couldn't make out clearly the scent of the stranger. Her eyesight was blurry as well. She saw the newcomer's white hair, the color of the single streak over each cheek and began to formulate a guess, but she asked anyway. "Who…are…?"

"Don't waste your breath," Sesshomaru's mother warned her. "I am Lady Shiroihana." Her golden eyes moved to Sesshomaru and her expression rippled with amusement. "I am this mortal's mother."

* * *

Inuyasha sat with the children during their makeshift dinnertime. He'd opened the shutters all about the house to dispel the scents of Sango's labor as well as to let in the cooler air of the evening. Sango's labor had reached its peak down the hall and with his acute hearing, Inuyasha heard every breath, every pained moan and every whisper or word of encouragement from Kagome, Kasai, and Miroku.

Sango and Miroku's sons were somber and silent while they sipped at their Ramen and scooped up their noodles. Kohimu and Tisoki, ravenous teenagers, were already eating seconds, but there was no joviality between them as was normal. Masuyo and Riki barely touched their food and whenever a sound reached Riki from where Sango was laboring he started to cry and fuss, asking Inuyasha if Sango would be all right.

"Feh, she's fine." But after a while he decided to send Shippo in as further backup. He smacked the kit on top of the head until Shippo reluctantly left his Ramen behind and slunk back to the bedroom. There was an advantage to having a powerful nose and a set of keen ears in the birthing process. Shippo would be able to act as a heart monitor for Sango and the baby. His nose would be just as effective as Inuyasha's in determining how near or far the birth was or how mother and baby were doing.

The best part of that situation was that it wasn't _Inuyasha_ that had to perform the service. It wasn't that he was lazy, but labor disturbed him and always had, as did the fact that it was _Sango_. Labor was so difficult, so personal, Inuyasha didn't feel comfortable sitting over her and sniffing while she huffed and moaned. He shuddered just thinking about it. Shippo on the other hand, he was just a kid…

Saya, seated on the corner of the table awkwardly between Inuyasha and Koinu, could also hear Sango laboring. The sounds and scents disturbed her, mostly because it was blood. Saya had not touched her ramen; she was too distracted by the sounds and smells of the distant laboring. Her eyes were pointed down the hallway and wide.

Koinu and Akisame were bickering, as usual, though even their banter was occasionally interrupted as both siblings picked out the sound of their mother's voice or Sango's cries. Koinu's ears laid flat over his head continuously, a mark of his underlying stress.

"How can you not like Ramen?" Akisame asked. She picked at Koinu's noodles with her chopsticks while he was holding the bowl but not actively eating it.

"Stop that," Koinu ordered her, pulling the bowl away.

Akisame persisted, following his bowl with her chopsticks. She snapped them together, capturing a clump of noodles and knocking it out. The noodly mass splattered onto the table in front of Saya and the little girl flinched as droplets of the ramen flicked onto her face.

Inuyasha glared at them and growled lightly in warning.

Koinu cringed at his father's growl, obedient as always, but Akisame ignored him in favor of reaching her arm across the table and past Koinu to snatch at the noodles with her chopsticks. She stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth in effort and grunted. "Almost…"

Saya lifted one hand and timidly pushed the noodles closer to Akisame's searching chopsticks. With her tiny cousin's help, Akisame grasped the mass of noodles and dragged them over the table, leaving a streak of flavored water and little specks of seasoning. She shoveled them into her mouth and grinned at Saya. "Thanks, cousin."

"You're welcome," Saya answered, averting her eyes shyly.

"Why aren't you eating your Ramen, Saya?" Akisame asked. In the pause between her question and Saya's answer, Akisame slurped obnoxiously on her noodles and grinned with a full mouth at Koinu when he made a face of disgust.

"Sorry," Saya murmured. Hesitantly she reached for the bowl and the chopsticks. She had not handled chopsticks in more than a week, not since her last meal at Jouka palace with her mother, Hanone, and Ginrei. The feel of them in her fingers, the look of the bowl steaming before her with the noodles inside, combined with the cries of the laboring woman, worked to disturb Saya. She thought of her mother crying out, she thought of herself scavenging from the villagers, eating their fish with her dirty, urchin's hands. She glanced across the table and saw the boys Riki and Masuyo watching her with curiosity and fascination and perhaps even admiration. They had called her a princess; a title that she didn't fully understand but knew had an implication of honor from their reactions.

Tears clouded her eyes. She lowered her head and began to whimper.

"You made her cry," Koinu snapped at his sister.

"What? No I didn't!"

"You stole my noodles and dropped them there and scared her!" Koinu frowned in anger and frustration.

"You weren't eating them! And Saya helped me get them!" Akisame stared at her brother and then leaned forward to examine Saya as well as her brooding father. She blinked her golden eyes in growing bafflement and guilt. "I don't think I made her cry…"

"I miss Mama," Saya cried, still holding her ramen and her chopsticks. "Mama…"

"Don't cry, Princess!" Masuyo chirped. "I'm sure your Mama's coming for you."

"Masuyo's right about that," Inuyasha growled. He turned to Saya with a sigh and gently took the bowl from her. "Look Saya—when your mother or…" he stopped and made a face at the thought, "…your father gets here they'll want to know I've been feeding you, so I need you to eat your Ramen, okay?"

Saya nodded and wiped at her tears. She lifted the chopsticks and dug into the bowl while Inuyasha held it for her. She began shoveling in the noodles, hardly tasting them until she had her first huge mouthful. Then, as she gummed and chewed the soft noodles, her face changed, slackening with delight as she swallowed. She put the chopsticks on the table and scooted back clumsily on the cushion she was sitting on.

Inuyasha made a face, confused by her actions. "Saya, what are you—"

"Uncle Inuyasha!" Saya said, addressing him in a small but somber voice. She dropped into a bow. "This one is unworthy of your skill!"

"What are you talking about?" Inuyasha tilted his head, a very confused dog. He looked at the other children, utterly baffled. "Is she talking about the way I hold the bowl?"

Koinu laughed, "I think she's saying you're a fabulous chef, Dad!"

As the rest of the children started to crack up laughing, Inuyasha scowled. "Hey, shut the hell up!" He jabbed his finger at Koinu, singling out his son. "And you! Call me _father."_

Saya lifted her head, unable to understand why her cousins and the human children were laughing. Before she could ask about it, a sound from the far hallway bedroom where Sango was laboring made all of them turn their heads. It was the sound of a baby squalling, crying as he drew his first breaths.

Inuyasha sighed with relief. "Well boys," he directed his words to Kohimu, Tisoki, Masuyo, and Riki, "get ready to meet your new baby brother."

* * *

A/N: I was pleased with Saya meeting Ramen, I laughed hard as it came into my head. And as I said, if she gets any cuter I'm going to have to die. The bears will come out of the woods and eat me. Eek! You know Stephen Colbert assures us that BEARS are one of the nation's greatest threats. BEARS. Yep. Anyway...next time...

Rin:

_The horses had a scent that Rin knew from her days riding. As an inuyoukai the dusty, oily scent of the horses was stronger, nearly overwhelming. Rin cringed from it but also found that it set her mouth watering and her hands sweating. With her superior night vision, Rin saw the shine of the horses' dark eyes, gleaming at her. She heard them snorting in the dark._

Sess/Sessmom:

_There were only two beings in all of creation that could belittle and mock Sesshomaru without fearing for their lives. One was Rin, but even her powers and rights were limited with the Lord of the West. The other was Sesshomaru's mother, who would always loom over him because she had given him life._


	22. Echoes of the Past

A/N: Okay this title just sprang into my head and it has little to do with the actual content of this chapter except for the riddle-ish conversation that Sessmom has with Tsuki. No one will figure it out, of that I'm sure. I didn't want Sessmom to sit and explain everything to Tsuki because that IS NOT Sessmom. Sessmom works by NOT telling ppl crap they need to know. She was that way in the manga so I stuck with what my gut said. So instead she babbles about Inutaisho bedding Izayoi, and hanyou. That is a story the manga never told us, but I keep fleshing it out inside my head with Sessmom and I have alluded to my vision of how it happened in _Innocence_ and now here as well. Maybe someday i'll write it if I'm feeling very ambitious.

**Sorry** for my delay, I have been dumb and watching the Olympics or camping or playing the Sims 2 like the nerd that I am. I plan on naming my next family's children after swear words. So things like Fucktard, Shithead, Asshole. I mean I already did RX drugs Lunesta, Flonase, Levitra, and Viagra and I did Japanese brand names Mistubishi, Sanyo, and Honda. Swear words are all that was left! So look out Veronaville, Fucktard Vu is coming!

Oh and be on the lookout for another **Beautiful Life** preview at the end of this chapter, as well as a funny short that I might post once it's done if you guys like it. Basically it's Inuyasha meets Caesar Milan **the Dog Whisperer**. Pssht! Bad dog!

Disclaimer: I do not own them

Last Chapter: Saya met her cousin Akisame. Masuyo and Riki were introduced to her as well and call her "Princess." Inuyasha made everyone Ramen while he avoided the birthing room. When Saya at last tasted hers she had to thank Inuyasha for his "great skill." Everyone had a good laugh at Inuyasha's expense. Soeki knocked Tsuki unconscious and approached Ginrei. Soeki/Jishin tried to convince Ginrei to gang up on Sess and kill him with her. Ginrei refused and defended Sess. She was injured, as was Sess, but at the last moment someone new appeared and killed Soeki—Shiroihana, Sesshomaru's mother.

* * *

**Echoes of the Past**

By the sunset of her first full day traveling, Rin discovered something new: hunger. It was not the stomach churning ache that she recalled from being human, instead it set her senses alight and her mind wandering, losing focus. Rin didn't recognize it as hunger but soon powerful desires rose up, crawling beneath her skin. A sound of birds from the trees sent her heart rushing and her hands convulsively clawing at the air. The scent of a wild animal that had crossed the road made her mouth water and slow her journey with the compulsion to follow it.

The changes baffled her. Rin forced herself to walk on. She stared down at her clawed hands, at the jagged, yellow marks over her wrists. _What is happening to me?_

As the sun drew lower in the sky, Rin picked out the scent of a village and she picked up her speed. The smell of their fires made her eyes burn, but along with it was the scent of meat and that brought on recognizable hunger pangs. Rin pressed on eagerly.

She came into the village after the sun had set. The humans were gathered around a bonfire, hooting like a bunch of apes. The scent of the fire, the brightness of it, and the stink of the humans set Rin on edge. She tried to enter their midst without drawing attention. She was still dressed like a peasant in the gray bathrobe that passed as a cheap kimono without an obi. Her black hair flowed out long and unrestrained.

As she passed the stables where the villagers kept their horses, the flighty herbivores panicked at her scent. They neighed and stamped their hooves, warning Rin.

The horses had a scent that Rin knew from her days riding. As an inuyoukai the dusty, oily scent of the horses was stronger, nearly overwhelming. Rin cringed from it but also found that it set her mouth watering and her hands sweating. With her superior night vision, Rin saw the shine of the horses' dark eyes, gleaming at her. She heard them snorting in the dark.

Human children ran by the stable then, breaking Rin's animal-fascination with the horses. It was a young boy and a girl, laughing as they played some sort of game like tag. The girl, a little larger than the boy, tackled her companion and tickled him. The boy squealed in a mixture of glee and tickle-agony as he squirmed and tried to stop her.

_Saya,_ Rin thought.

She turned away from the stables and walked more confidently toward the humans and their fire. There were spits over the fire and wild boars roasting. Fat dripped off the bodies into the fire, making it hiss and burn with more enthusiasm. Rin watched, distracted by the scent of the meat even while the fire repulsed her.

"Hey!" a man shouted at her, pointing.

Rin tensed, blinking and straining her eyes against the fire. "Yes?"

"Who are you?"

More of the humans rose and turned their attention to her, perplexed at her sudden appearance. With her keen ears, Rin heard all of their whispers. She tried to keep her face blank, to hide the fact that her senses were above and beyond all of them. If she appeared as nothing but a weary traveler they would be more inclined to share their meat.

"Please, sir," Rin said. She knelt shakily into a bow. One hand clenched up in the sandy dirt, the other pulled on a few grass stems. "I am searching for my daughter. If you could find give me just a little of something to eat…"

"A woman traveling all alone?" the man asked, incredulous. "In the _dark?_ Woman, are you mad?"

A woman stepped out of the circle around the fire and asked, "Miss—where's your husband? A brother? Some escort…?"

Rin lowered her eyes, staring at the dirt. _I have none of those things._ Of course the humans would never accept such an answer. They would look down on her for such an admission, assuming her a prostitute or something nonhuman, which was much closer to the mark. She lied quickly, "My husband was slain on our journey by his younger brother. My brother-in-law has also taken my child. I must catch up to him; I have no time to waste if I expect to see my daughter again."

"Don't listen to her," one of the men snapped. "She's clearly some foul spirit!"

"Shut up, Ken!"

The humans began to bicker but their leader, the tall, broad-shouldered man that had first called out to Rin, stepped forward, approaching her. Rin stayed low but her body tensed, her shoulders hunched. She became aware of the lack of weight at her hips. When she had traveled without male escort in the past she had always carried several powerful demon blades with her, all of the forged by Sesshomaru to protect her. Although she didn't need a sword now because she had claws, Rin longed for the familiarity of a blade like Hikitsuru.

The human leader stood above her. "Hey, sit up woman," he ordered.

Rin did as he commanded. The man squinted at her, scrutinizing her face. Then he pulled away from her, his mouth falling wide open. "You're a demon!"

"What?" a nearby woman asked, gaping.

"She has the markings of a demon! A highborn demon!"

Rin frowned and brushed her fingers over her cheeks but couldn't feel the ragged marks. She'd forgotten already that her face gave her away.

"Get the weapons!" someone yelled.

Rin reached out, waving her hands as she tried to call them back. "Please—I'm not here to hurt you! I just wanted—"

An arrow whizzed past her face, cutting through her hair. Rin leapt backward, tumbling. Without another pause she raced away for the road.

* * *

"You are all pawns of the destructive earth goddess Jishin," Shiroihana said. She was seated on the floor beside Sesshomaru, hidden once more behind his screen. Her clawed hands moved tenderly over his shoulder with strips of an absorbent, clean fabric to act as a bandage. Sesshomaru sat beside her, stiff and silent; averting his face and eyes in what was probably embarrassment.

There were only two beings in all of creation that could belittle and mock Sesshomaru without fearing for their lives. One was Rin, but even her powers and rights were limited with the Lord of the West. The other was Sesshomaru's mother, who would always loom over him because she had given him life.

Pale and weak, Sesshomaru offered Shiroihana no answers as to abrupt arrival. He tried not to wince as she wrapped his wound. The pain he felt as a mortal seemed magnified beyond belief. Sesshomaru put it out of his mind, focusing on the texture of the screen wall, or the disturbing sound of Hanone's whimpering on the other side of it where she sat with Ginrei. The pup was as good as terrified with the scent of her mother's blood.

"Honorable Mother," Ginrei croaked on the opposite side of the screen through her damaged throat. "I'm afraid I don't…"

"Hush, Lady Ginrei," Shiroihana ordered. "Save your breath for healing. I don't expect you to understand, I expect you to obey."

"Yes, Mother," Ginrei replied, rasping through her wound.

Sesshomaru turned slightly at the waist and used the hand of his uninjured shoulder to catch one of his mother's wrists. He glared at her with his human brown eyes. "Mother, explain yourself. I will not be so easily cowed."

Shiroihana's expression was blank and unmoved as she flicked her clawed fingers out against Sesshomaru, pricking his hand just enough that he felt pain. Sesshomaru, unaccustomed to such pain at even the smallest contact, flinched away, releasing her. Shiroihana frowned and pulled tighter on his bandages before she slashed the fabric and began to tie it. "You are as stubborn as your father was."

With the bandaging complete, Shiroihana rose lithely to her feet and moved with tiny steps that barely fluttered the bottom of her robe. She paused at the small gap between the screen that separated Sesshomaru's corner of the room from the rest of the space where Ginrei and Hanone were waiting. Looking back at her son, Shiroihana's golden eyes relaxed, as did the whole of her face, transformed by affection and a tinge of worry.

She lifted her shoulders in a shrugging motion, adjusting her white shoulder fluff. "I will answer all of your questions in time, Sesshomaru. Right now I must fetch the hanyou girl."

"What do you want with her?" Sesshomaru asked.

"It was her father's spirit that summoned me here. A monk with a proposal for the Kosetsu…" She moved her slender hands over the Meidou-seki pendant, large and powerful about her neck and ran her claw-tips over its surface. Her lips curled in a small smile. "Rest, my son. I will not allow you to die yet."

Sesshomaru narrowed his eyes on her with a mixture of disgust and relief. Relief that she had saved him. Disgust that she had not changed. She was still as manipulative as he recalled from his youth, and she managed to wrestle authority from him with a sickening ease. She was secretive, conniving. _How comforting,_ he thought, considering her reassurance that she wouldn't allow him to die. Shiroihana had unashamedly laid him on courses for disaster before as tests, and a great many of them had proven to be far from safe and pleasant. Sesshomaru had little trust in her, though he knew she was probably telling the truth: she would not allow him to die. Shiroihana was a better guardian than Ginrei and Shimofuri combined…

He listened as she left the room, opening and closing the sliding door with a grating hiss. When she had gone Sesshomaru ducked his head in exhaustion and pain and allowed himself to grimace, biting back his weakness. He'd held it back while Shiroihana was present. Even to his mother—no, especially to his mother—Sesshomaru loathed his own weakness. Again he thought of Bakusaiga, of ending his life, but the image of Rin and Saya, the idea that they were yet living, kept him from reaching for the sword.

He would wait for some word from them and carry on in his shame, contemplating the future.

By the time Shiroihana reached Tsukiyume's room, the maids and servants had already amassed there over the unconscious hanyou. They clucked like worried hens in the henhouse. When Shiroihana threw open the door they gaped at her and scurried away from her tread without a word of protest or question.

Shiroihana knelt beside the futon mattress where Tsukiyume's body slumped in an ungraceful heap amidst the white furs. Moving with the rustle of robes, Shiroihana reached out and flicked Tsukiyume's white ears. The first flick made the appendages flap spastically, trying to dislodge their assailant. The second flick from Shiroihana's claws made Tsukiyume sit upright, gasping and wide-eyed.

"What—who…" the hanyou girl stopped speaking and gripped her jaw. Her brow furrowed heavily with pain. A small whimper escaped her lips.

Shiroihana frowned. "I see you will not be able to speak very much."

Tsukiyume peered at her over her hand, her orange-brown eyes bright with unshed tears of pain. She swallowed loudly and shook her head, agreeing with Shiroihana's assessment.

"I am Lady Shiroihana, Sesshomaru's mother. I have come to protect my son's interests as well as my own. I've come to claim my heir."

The hanyou girl stared at her uncomprehendingly, unable to speak to ask the multitude of questions that tingle don her tongue, demanding release. Shiroihana smirked at her, reading her expression with amusement, perhaps even glee. "I see," she said, "that you have not met with the monk-spirit to discuss this." Shiroihana turned her gaze away from Tsukiyume and sighed as if bored. "I'm afraid you're useless to me, hanyou. Mute and confused. I expect both situations will be remedied shortly—but not by me. I haven't the time to waste explaining these things to you, hanyou."

Tsukiyume reached out and pawed at Shiroihana's shoulders, scratching the fluff. Shiroihana curled her lips in a silent snarl and pulled backward, scooting on her knees. "Stop that."

Tsukiyume cringed at the lady's words. She averted her eyes in favor of pressing her head into the white furs. Her long black hair flowed around her and obscured her face where she fought tears of frustration. The inability to speak humiliated her, as did Shiroihana's presence. Tsukiyume knew that Shiroihana was an elder in the clan, reclusive and quiet, but still a proud inuyoukai queen of sorts. Arguably she was the most distinguished, renowned, and powerful females of the clan. She had married the legendary Inutaisho, she was mother to the most notorious and infamous Lord of the Western Lands.

…and she almost certainly despised hanyou. The fact that Tsukiyume couldn't speak to defend herself through her own searing pain would only further degrade her in Shiroihana's eyes.

Shiroihana watched the hanyou girl with interest. She lifted her hands up and stroked the white shoulder fluff, contemplating Tsukiyume. Her stepson, of sorts, was hanyou and like Sesshomaru and Inutaisho before him, that hanyou had achieved legendary status. Hanyou intrigued her, just as they piqued Sesshomaru's curiosity.

"You know girl," Shiroihana murmured, continuing to stroke her shoulder fluff delicately, "my husband once mated a human woman. I'm sure you've heard of the child that resulted. He was conceived right within my own castle." Her expression hardened, taking on an openly bitter and angry set in her jaw and in her lips and eyes.

Tsukiyume turned her head slightly, gazing from the white furs and through her own black mat of hair at the inuyoukai woman. Her eyes were wide with awe and a small amount of fear. Her body tensed, waiting for Shiroihana's next words.

"I cast them both out of my land and my castle," she spat, her eyes had glazed over with memory. "And then Inutaisho died while the human woman and the child lived, and I left these islands to get away from them." Her golden eyes flicked to Tsukiyume and the hardness gradually left her face, replaced by a tight, pensive expression. "Of course it seems it was not weakness or depravity as I had thought after all. Fate has a strange power over all of us, girl. And now my own son has a hanyou daughter, and Taikokajin, who I once tended as a pup, has you. How truly _fascinating…"_

Tsukiyume's ears flattened and she moved away from Shiroihana and bowed. She worked her jaw and it popped, spurting hotly with fresh pain. She squeezed her eyes shut with the pain but managed to grind out, "Lady…"

Shiroihana spoke again as good as ignoring Tsukiyume's attempt at speech. "It is impossible to separate one's self from a spouse or a mate with whom a child is shared, unless the partner dies. Inutaisho freed me but left his _shame_ behind for me and for his pure son." Her eyes narrowed. "I believe now an exception must be made and the child must change hands."

Tsukiyume's face creased with bafflement, her ears stayed flat. Shiroihana stared past her at the distant wall, deep in thought. The silence dragged out for a time and then suddenly Shiroihana glanced back at Tsukiyume. Her amber eyes burned, predatory and hawk-like.

"I will be frank with you girl. The monk's spirit came to me with the tale of this Jishin, a renegade goddess. He believes there is no way to defeat her, but instead we must attack the inuyoukai that back her." She smiled widely with real amusement. "Like any human, dead or living, he is uneducated of course, but I have accepted his plans."

Tsukiyume frowned and shook her head, desperate for an explanation that made sense to her. "What…?"

Shiroihana stared at the hanyou girl and her hands moved once more over her white fluff, stroking it as gently as if it were her infant son sleeping against her shoulder. "Both of your cousins have died trying to take my son's life. That is intolerable. I have come to claim him and my granddaughter, the child Hanone. However, in return for your brother's aid I must leave him with something of great value." The smile curved over her lips again, crafty and filled with mirth. "I believe your brother has recently become unmarried, correct?"

Tsukiyume scowled. Her expression said clearly, _I don't understand._

"I propose," Shiroihana continued, "that you and I draw up an agreement. As payment for watching over my son, I shall give your brother Lady Ginrei. The mother of my granddaughter and heir."

* * *

Inuyasha issued orders out to the children after their dinner of Ramen. Kagome was likely tired from attending the birth and the labor, she probably wouldn't have the energy to tackle their dishes or other household cleaning. Of course Inuyasha wasn't shy in the least about making his guests work. Kohimu and Tisoki carted their bowls away, Riki and Masuyo were slow to follow but with Kohimu's badgering and a glare from Inuyasha they soon became small but helpful workers. Koinu took Saya's bowl and her chopsticks from her, carrying them with his own and wearing a small smile. Inuyasha caught Akisame with a look and shoved his own bowl with its utensils at her.

Akisame frowned but took the dirty dishes from his hands anyway. "Why aren't _you_ helping?"

Her father made a face and his ears stood erect sharply, offended. "Watch that tone, Aki."

"Is it because dishes are girly work?" Akisame demanded, scowling.

"Feh—look Aki, I slay demons and _I made dinner,_ you can clean it up. Quit complaining or…" he paused, his gaze un-focusing as he searched his mind for a suitable punishment. "…or I'll make you stay inside and read and change the new baby's diapers. No playing at all. Got that?"

Akisame made a face but left without further argument. She passed into the kitchen where a large, empty basin waited, surrounded by the other children. Kohimu had vanished to fetch water while Tisoki and Koinu bickered over the right kind of dish soap and sponge.

Inuyasha stared down at the table while his ears turned backward, following the sounds from the kitchen. His amber gaze darkened with contemplation as sounds from the bedroom continued. Sango's latest son was squalling, Kagome praised the bravery of the latest delivery, and Shippo congratulated Kasai on aiding in the birth. Through all of the white noise in the background of his home, Inuyasha's mind wandered, unable to focus on why he'd wanted to steal the moment after dinner between himself and Saya…

The little girl, his niece, stared beyond him toward the kitchen, enthralled by her cousins and the human children as they jabbered like monkeys. She cocked her head to one side, perplexed and amused as Kohimu shouted, "Don't do that! You're going to break it!" A smaller voice answered that she recognized as Masuyo, the boy that called her _Princess._ "Sorry, Big Brother."

"Saya," Inuyasha said.

His voice snapped Saya into a stiff alertness. She lifted her golden eyes to her uncle and then averted them respectfully. "Yes, Uncle Inuyasha?"

"I need you to tell me what you remember happening before you got to the village. Where was your dad at? Or how about R—your mom…?" Inuyasha tried to control the emotion in his voice. If Saya picked up his concern she would freeze up with fear or worry. It seemed impossible that Saya would end up at the village suddenly, as if she'd been teleported there.

Saya's expression clouded with a mixture of confusion and pain. She opened her mouth to speak and then her golden eyes flicked nervously to Inuyasha's and she stammered, rephrasing the words before she'd even given them sound. "…I was playing with Little Sister. Lady Ginrei was with us. Mama went inside. Then—then the ground shook and the river opened big like a mouth." Saya lifted her hands and opened them, demonstrating the scene for her uncle. After a moment she frowned, deciding that that didn't do the earthquake justice. She pushed her fingers into her mouth and pulled her lips apart, showing off her white teeth and then snapping them, making a distant clicking sound with her jaw.

Inuyasha smirked and made a gesture for her to continue. "So there was an earthquake—I get it."

"I heard everyone screaming," Saya said, quieting with the memory. "Little Sister fell into the water. I…I couldn't see Mama or Lady Ginrei…" Her eyes widened, staring straight through Inuyasha's chest unseeingly. "Then I fell too. It was dark—and then I woke up in the place with all of the bad humans."

As perplexing as the child's explanation was, it offered Inuyasha nothing in the way of answers. How could an earthquake in the mountains of the Western Lands have carried Saya to the beach? Why hadn't Sesshomaru come after her? Was it possible that he just hadn't found her yet? The thought of his brother circling overhead, readying Bakusaiga, made Inuyasha's blood run cold, ice water in his veins.

"Saya, where was your father when this happened?" He forgot himself and referred to Sesshomaru with a more respectful term. The change, and the urgency that Saya caught in his voice, put the child instantly on edge.

Saya averted her gaze, staring meekly into her lap. "Father left. He didn't come back before it happened."

Inuyasha paused, withholding his next question, burying it. If Sesshomaru had died—and it seemed there was a high chance that something had happened to Rin too—Saya would have only her little sister as a blood relative. Only the tiny sibling and _Inuyasha._ Perhaps by proper law Saya would belong under _Lady Ginrei_'s protection and care, but Inuyasha felt something hard and stubborn growing within him at such a thought. He understood that Sesshomaru had married some inuyoukai woman and had two daughters, but he had never met his sister-in-law, he didn't know her. As he looked at Saya's white hair, her little clawed hands, and the bluish crescent moon on her forehead, he felt no inclination whatsoever to let go of her lightly.

"Was there a war in the Western Lands? Was that why your father left?" Inuyasha asked, gently. His ears fell back against his white hair, in spite of his effort to keep them upright in an unaffected, unworried position.

Saya lifted her head and blinked at him. She cocked her head to one side. "What is _war?"_

The frown spread over Inuyasha's face before he could stop it. _Damn._

From the kitchen Koinu shouted, "Stop splashing her, you pervert!"

Saya turned her head and smiled, exposing her little white milk teeth. Inuyasha growled under his breath, trying to ignore the outburst and focus his thoughts. Saya wouldn't know anything about politics. She was as clueless as Inuyasha in that regard. Inuyasha raked his brain while Saya watched and listened to the battle of wills in the kitchen, distracted. What would slow Sesshomaru from something as urgent as his blood, his own daughter…? If Rin had died in the earthquake—she had been inside by Saya's admission, which meant that a beam could've crushed her or a fire might have suffocated or burned her—nothing should've stopped Sesshomaru from finding the only thing he had left of Rin. Hanyou or not, Inuyasha couldn't wrap his brain around the prospect of abandonment, though it repeatedly smashed its way into his brain. He took in the torn, dirty under robe that Saya was wearing still, the rich fabric and color through the stains and the rips. Over and over he concluded _she was not abandoned,_ and then found no other explanation for his brother's negligence.

Inuyasha, completely absorbed by the cycles of questions inside his brain, failed to catch the gentle tread coming down the hallway. It was only when Saya moved, gazing past him with wide, wet eyes that Inuyasha stirred and twisted around to face the visitor.

It was Kagome, wandering gradually out of the back bedroom like a zombie. Her skin was flushed and her clothing stained with blood and other birthing fluids, but she wore a proud smile on her face. "Another healthy baby boy," she announced, though that was old news for Inuyasha. Her eyes landed on Saya and her face slackened with surprise. "Oh—hello…"

Saya made a small whimpering noise and darted from her spot, grabbing hold of Inuyasha and using him as a shield. The hanyou sighed irritably but didn't push her away. His eyes stayed on his bloodstained wife. "This is the girl I told you about."

Kagome puffed with embarrassment and fatigue. "I'm sorry, I'm probably scaring her." She started to wipe her face with one hand but stopped when she realized that it was soiled with birth fluids.

More footsteps pounded over the floor, this time from the kitchen. Koinu and Akisame emerged, the older sibling dragging the younger. Akisame's face and her chest dripped with soap bubbles and water and the young girl was pawing at her eyes. She stumbled behind Koinu, half-blind.

"D—Father," Koinu grumbled, "That pervert Tisoki won't stop splashing Aki. Some of it got in her eye and I think it would be better if she just stayed out here…"

Stretched thin between his niece, his wife, and his two children Inuyasha growled, scowling. "Fine, Aki you stay here and help look after Saya. Koinu—I don't care what that monk says, thrash Tisoki if he does something stupid like that again."

Koinu nodded and led his sister forward while Akisame spluttered on the soap bubbles.

Seeing her son for the first time since he'd left, Kagome's expression warped with alarm. "Koinu!" She moved forward, her feet thumping over the floor with more vigor than usual. Koinu froze as she approached him, uncertain, like a deer in the headlights. Kagome's scent repulsed him with its current perfume of sweat, Sango's blood, urine, and amniotic fluid. (A/N: Birth isn't pretty!!)

"Mom?" he asked.

Kagome's eyes narrowed for a moment and then she pointed to his shoulder. "You were injured!" She glared at Inuyasha and the hanyou cringed immediately on instinct, as if anticipating a sit as punishment.

For a moment there was silence, astounded, confused, and embarrassed. Koinu's shirt covered all sign of his bandages, but Kagome, as his mother, had been able to spot the way Koinu favored his shoulder and held his arm awkwardly. She had no way of knowing how old the injury was, how extensive it had been, or how it had been treated. Now worry overrode everything else as she thought of gangrene or tetanus or rabies, any horrific disease that her children could've been exposed to with an injury from some demon. Of course she had no way of knowing too that in this instance the "demon," that had wounded her son was sitting in the same room with all of them, huddled next to Inuyasha and whimpering.

"Kagome—"

"Mom, I—"

Kagome interrupted them both with her power as the matriarch of their family, demanding, "What happened to him, Inuyasha? Koinu—open your shirt, let me see it. I'm sure your father didn't bandage it properly since he's so stubborn we always had to tie him down to get him to sit still with his own injuries…"

At the word _sit,_ innocent as it was, Inuyasha cringed, closing his eyes. His ears flattened as he prepared for an impact that never quite came.

"Mom," Akisame interrupted, waving one arm to catch her attention and end the rant. "Cut it out! You're scaring Saya!"

Blinking, Kagome took note of the little girl where she was still pressed to Inuyasha's side, peering up at Kagome with a gaping mouth shaped in a silent O. Embarrassed; Kagome took a few steps back and apologized. "Oh, I'm sorry—I must look horrible coming out here with all this blood on my clothes."

"Feh!" Inuyasha grunted, glaring at her now that he had recovered from her accidental use of the evil _sit_ word. "It's the way you smell too, that's even worse."

"_Inuyasha…"_ she growled, quietly under her breath. "Thanks."

Startling them all then, Saya spoke up in a tiny, whimpering voice. "This one hurt Koinu. This one—Saya is very, very sorry for hurting Cousin Koinu. This one didn't mean to do it." She leaned out a little more, looking at Kagome with a few tears gleaming brightly in her eyes. "Are you…" she paused, unable to remember the title of her cousins' mother, "…Cousin Koinu's mother?"

It was Akisame, not the bewildered, speechless Kagome that answered Saya. "Yeah, that's our mom."

Saya sniffled and bit her lip. She crawled clumsily over Inuyasha's lap—a movement that made Inuyasha scramble backward awkwardly, trying to get away from her—and bowed to Kagome. "Most honorable mother…please forgive this one!"

Stunned, Kagome stared silently at the little girl, bowing on the floor before her. She took in the child's clothing, her loose, messy white hair, and the little claws on her tiny hands. At last she sputtered, "It's okay—Koinu, you're all right, aren't you?"

The pup nodded, his cheeks glowed red while his ears stayed tucked against his head. "I'm fine, Mom."

"Good," Kagome sighed. Her shoulders drooped as the tension left her. She laughed, "It's okay. I forgive you Saya."

"You can sit up now," Koinu murmured, stepped forward and stooping over to nudge Saya's shoulder.

"You two watch Saya," Inuyasha barked. "Kagome come with me."

As he got up Akisame called out, "Hey! Dad, where are you going? What's up?"

Inuyasha was already beside Kagome, pushing her down the hall. He didn't answer his daughter's question but both the siblings and little Saya could hear him muttering under his breath rapidly.

Koinu turned and smirked at his sister. "Dad's going to give Mom a bath."

Akisame closed her eyes tightly and covered her mouth with one hand. Through her fingers, in a muffled voice, she yelled, "Eew!"

* * *

A/N: I have been slow writing lately, so no preview for _Return's_ next chapter. But I can offer snippets of other back burner projects. First, _Beautiful Life:_

_His memories clashed, fighting one another. He saw Kagome, the real girl he was speaking of, sitting beneath a tree in the winter, cuddling a small child to her breast. He saw his brother moving up behind her to nuzzle her neck and peer down at the child. And then it was high summer and he saw a circle of human men on horseback, far in the distance. In their center was another mother and child pair, but nearly four hundred years after Kagome had held her first child. _

_He flinched when he heard the guns go off and he smelled and tasted human blood as well as…__Mikadzuki, Okibikuro…_

And then this is a a funny piece I've been working on occasionally. You guys will have to tell me if you'd like it enough for me to finish it and publish it as a one shot. I've been thinking it would be funny shorts based on Dog-culture. So things like an Inuyasha dog show (Haha, Inu-kanuba cup) and if I felt risky a sexual dog joke thing...But anyway, what I have been writing is basically Kagome calls Caesar Milan the Dog Whisperer for his help. Take a look and tell me what you think:

_"Pshht."__ As Inuyasha pulls away, Caesar follows him, continuously poking and hissing. _

_Inuyasha stumbles backwards, bumping into Kagome. When he sees her, he drops Tetsusaiga and pulls her in front of him as a shield. Kagome objects, swatting at him, "Inuyasha!"_

_Caesar stops and turns to regard the rest of the Higurashi family. "Now we've uncovered a different problem. Not only is he needy, but he's also possessive of his owner."_

_"Fuck you!" Inuyasha shouts, but he has not emerged from behind the safety of Kagome's back._


	23. Sending the Wrong Message

A/N: I wanted to have Shimofuri and Rin find each other in this chapter, but Inuyasha and Saya's part took center stage and it was so wrenching but entertaining to write that it took over and it was already so long by the time I finished that I had to end it there.

Disclaimer: I do not own them

Last Chapter: Rin realized she can feel hunger as an inuyoukai and she tried to pose as a human to get some food. Unfortunately they saw through her and sent her packing. Shiroihana spoke to Tsukiyume, mentioning her interest in hanyou, and she told a little of Inutaisho and Izayoi's story. Inuyasha tried and failed to understand what happened to Saya and her family by questioning the little girl. Kagome came out, still dirty with blood from the birth, and scared Saya. When Kagome saw that Koinu had been injured she threw a small fit and Saya confessed to being the one to injure Koinu. She begged for Kagome's forgiveness and the startled mother gave it.

* * *

**Sending the Wrong Message**

He came across her scent purely by accident. Shimofuri traveled parallel to the human road, cutting through the trees in his lithe true form. He didn't expect that Rin had made much headway coming out of the north, if she had escaped at all. He didn't keep his nose low to the ground to search for her scent, but there were some smells that would seek out his nose, no matter what. Scents that Shimofuri was preprogrammed from an early age to take notice of. Scents that his already keen olfactory ability honed in on with ease and interest and perfection.

The scent of an inuyoukai bitch made him stumble, his paws sliding over the pine needles that covered the forest floor. The stink of decaying plants wafted up, forcing out the female scent for a time, but Shimofuri knew without a doubt that he hadn't imagined it.

At a full stop, Shimofuri shifted from side to side on all four paws, tense. His mission was to find Rin and bring her back to the Nanka, to the ailing Sesshomaru, as fast as he physically could. But deeper instincts, and a catlike curiosity, made him take the moment to stop and search out the scent of the bitch again.

Unlike wolf youkai that happily inhabited the wilds, roaming in their territorial packs, inuyoukai adopted a more human-like, solitary existence. They were more likely to become rulers, less likely to eat humans, preferring to use them to their own ends. As a result, when Shimofuri or Sesshomaru sped through the wilderness many scents of other animals and youkai assaulted them, but rarely was it one of their own. For Shimofuri to find a female of his own species out and about like himself immediately piqued his interest.

His search for Rin would have to wait a few moments…

Snorting, Shimofuri backtracked, his head low to the ground, his nose twitching and puffing as he breathed. A few steps closer to the road, at the base of a frilly bush with red berries dotting it, Shimofuri found the source of it. He pawed at it once and then pressed his snout into it. Pine needles, dirt, and moss clung to his black nose, even stuck in his nostrils. He pawed at his face, squinting his eyes shut in irritation.

The scent was indeed of a female inuyoukai. She had come to the bush and relieved herself, urinating. It was an odd place for a female to leave her mark. If this was the female's territory then she would want to leave her urine in her true form high on the tree trunks. Then the scent would be far more obvious to trespassers like Shimofuri. Instead the female left her scent as if she were the trespasser, or as if she were a human, stumbling into the forest to "use a bush."

If she wasn't the mistress of the lands he was passing through, Shimofuri had little reason to pause over the scent or analyze it further unless he was looking to track her down or challenge her as a mate. Despite himself the idea did occur to him—primeval instincts like finding a mate could never be completely shut out, no matter how much higher emotions attached to it—but Shimofuri dismissed it as the deeper elements of the scent reached his brain from his vomeronasal organ.

Nearly every scent left by a living being held deeper, hidden scents in it. The tiniest chemicals in a scent could reveal the greatest secrets, and like many animals, Shimofuri used the sixth sense of his vomeronasal organ to taste a scent to read the hidden messages in it. With it he could tell whether the female was ready to mate, if she was related to him even distantly, where she had been raised, and how healthy she was. This female's secrets made his blue-gray eyes widen with shock.

She was highborn, as he was. She was healthy, but hungry. She was very distantly related to him. And she was _Rin._

Shimofuri backed away from the scent and turned in a circle, sniffing at the air and searching the woods around him. It was dark; no starlight peeked through the canopy. The air was calm, other than the natural scents of the forest Shimofuri picked out nothing unusual in it. He breathed hard, struggling to think clearly. The taste of the scent stayed with him. It was inuyoukai, but it was also Rin. The pheromones of an inuyoukai bitch's body infused the scent, making a simpler part of Shimofuri's body and brain consider her attractive, but unreceptive and therefore uninteresting. On top of that Rin's s scent stalled his brain, like a calculator trying to divide by zero.

How could his interpretation be right? How could Rin have the scent of an inuyoukai? How could he pick up a slight taste in her scent, a hint that he was related to her…?

He stood still in the blackness of the nighttime, waiting for some kind of sign. It was memory that finally saved him. Through the terror of seeing Amagumori die, Shimofuri recalled his sister sitting upright in bed, speaking to the air. _"Reborn?"_ she'd asked. After she'd returned to her senses she'd told him that Rin and Saya were alive, but she hadn't said anything about rebirth.

_Reborn?_

The scent called to him, tempting him. Shimofuri lifted his lips in distaste as he moved in and pressed his nose into the spot. He snorted, sucking hard on the scent to get a thorough taste. Closing his eyes in disgust, he waited, letting the primitive parts of his brain work out just what it was that his nose and the scent were trying to tell him. He kept his thoughts still, unwilling to let himself get carried away with wild theories.

After a few minutes Shimofuri lifted his head up and shook his entire body. He made a puffing sound, spitting out the scent-taste with a sneeze. Rin had escaped the north after all and she was following the road south. Shimofuri turned to follow her, moving much closer to the road now. Under the lightlessness of the canopy he was as good as invisible as his lithe, smooth body slipped through the forest.

* * *

As the household quieted and settled in for the night, Inuyasha felt anything but peace. After the chores had been finished by Miroku and Sango's squabbling sons and while Kagome and Kasai helped Sango clean up, the hanyou sat out on his porch, under the stars.

The evening was warm, crickets peeped and frogs sang, rejoicing in the height of the summertime. He listened with one ear to the noises from inside the house, counting the footsteps of the children to take a head count. Koinu, Shippo, Kohimu, Tisoki, Riki, and Masuyo in the kitchen and the sitting room, all of them gathered around Miroku who was holding the newest edition to the extended family. Further back Inuyasha made out the sounds of water splashing, of Sango's exhausted voice and Kagome and Kasai cheery words.

Everyone accounted for except Akisame, who was at his right side, and Saya on his left. Tetsusaiga he kept in his lap, balancing the long, sheathed blade between his two flat palms.

"The monk in there," Akisame was saying, speaking to Saya by leaning forward and peering over her father's fang sword. "His name's Miroku."

"Monk," Saya repeated. "Monk Miroku." Her expression was fierce with concentration, absorbing and holding Akisame's words like a sponge.

"He has six kids now," Akisame said and her golden eyes sprang wide. She gestured, holding her hands apart to demonstrate the enormous size of Miroku's family. "Koinu likes to call Miroku _uncle_, and sometimes I do too, but really he isn't related to us. He and aunt Sango are friends. But anyway—Miroku has five boys now!" Akisame paused to giggle, apparently finding the monk's predicament humorous. "He and aunt Sango want another girl, but they keep having boys!"

"I have a little sister," Saya said, suddenly beaming with pride.

Inuyasha glanced down at his niece, though he said nothing and the little girl didn't catch his look. He hadn't been listening with much interest as Akisame jabbered, but it had occurred to him that Saya might be more comfortable with Akisame, who was much closer to her in age, and she might reveal more about her family situation to her cousin, forgetting that Inuyasha was present and would easily overhear.

"I think I heard about her," Akisame said. "What's her name?"

"Hanone." Saya's shoulders fell abruptly, saddened. "I don't know what happened to Little Sister." She started to sniffle and wiped at her nose. "I miss her. And I miss Mama."

"I'd miss my mom too," Akisame murmured, smiling reassuringly. "But I'm sure she's fine." She wrapped an arm around Inuyasha and leaned into him, revealing the vulnerable girl underneath as she snuggled into her father's side, startling the distracted hanyou with her display of affection. "Daddy," she sighed into his haori, "tell Saya about her mom."

Inuyasha stroked Akisame's smooth black hair almost absently; his golden eyes were unfocused with his dark, troubled thoughts. He peered down at his daughter, spotting the way her eyes, so like his own, gleamed with love and life. But every time he blinked Inuyasha saw his brother's narrowed gaze burning red with rage. His fingers curled in a fist, clutching long strands of Akisame's soft hair, feeling his daughter's young, innocent vitality.

What had happened to Sesshomaru? There had been many times when Inuyasha had found himself dragged into a battle that his father had started, and the enemy that his father made always sought revenge on Inutaisho through his two sons. Had some ancient enemy of their family arisen and slaughtered Sesshomaru? Was Rin dead too? What of the little sister, Hanone? And even if Sesshomaru was alive and well, he would be searching for Saya undoubtedly. _And when he finds her here…_

He saw Koinu clutched to Sesshomaru's chest, the boy's blue eyes streaming wild, terrified tears, his little nose oozing blood…

_Would he kill them?_ Inuyasha wondered, staring down at his daughter. If Rin had died, if Sesshomaru was not right within his own mind…

"Uncle Inuyasha?" Saya asked, her tiny voice peeping.

The hanyou turned, blinking with a frown. His fist uncurled, releasing the strands of hair he'd bunched up. Akisame, who hadn't felt or seen her father's inward struggle, yawned sleepily and leaned more into Inuyasha, rubbing her head against him in a catlike motion.

On his left side Inuyasha stared down at Saya. The same golden eyes peered that had peered up at him from his daughter now glowed in his niece's gaze. Her hair was still wild and messy, her clothes still the stained and torn rags of a once rich under robe. Inuyasha saw the shape of her lips was Rin's own, but the regal curve of her eyes were the same as Sesshomaru's. If Sesshomaru and Rin had passed on, the victims of some enemy that had slain them to take revenge on Inutaisho, than Saya would have nowhere else to go.

He reached out with the arm that wasn't slung around his daughter, leaving Tetsusaiga on his thighs, and slowly touched the purple-blue crescent moon on Saya's forehead. The little girl closed her eyes, flinching, but didn't pull away. Her trust in her uncle was nearly absolute, though Inuyasha hardly understood what he'd done to earn such trust. Carefully, he traced the crescent moon, wondering at it and at his brother, silently wishing things had been different.

"Saya," he asked, clearing his throat and withdrawing his hand. He tried to smile at her.

"Yes, Uncle Inuyasha?"

"Do you like it here, kid?"

Saya gave a little bow. "Very much, Uncle."

"If…" he stopped, trying not to frown as he struggled to find the right words, to avoid alarming his niece. "…if for some reason I can't get you back home to your mother and father, Saya—you know you're welcome to stay in my home." He paused, examining her face and grappling with his own complex emotions. "You could have a home with us." The next words he wanted to say were _as my daughter_, but Saya's changing expression silenced him.

"But, Uncle," she bowed more deeply, only to bump clumsily into his side. Akisame giggled and grinned at her, sleepily. Saya sat still for a moment, keeping her eyes lowered in what might've been shame.

"We'll get you home, kid," Inuyasha announced with a forced, gruff confidence, burying what he'd tried to say before. He nudged Akisame on his side and grunted, "Go see if your mom and the others are out of the bath. Get Saya dressed for bed and her hair combed, okay?"

Akisame sat up obediently and nodded. "Yes, Dad."

As Saya and Akisame left, sliding the front door open and then closed again, Inuyasha sighed. But he had no time to look thoroughly defeated before the scent on the air made his spine straighten with alarm. The hanyou leapt to his feet and held Tetsusaiga out, ready to draw it. He searched the garden from the verandah, sensing the intruder's aura and his scent. _A fox…_

"Come out!"

Precious seconds passed. Each breath that Inuyasha took revealed the fox scent, but brought no sign of it. Vaguely, through his alarm, Inuyasha recognized the scent. The same fox had invaded his home before, searching for Rin, a messenger for Shimofuri in the Middle Lands. The fox had stalled him with tricks before and gone straight for Tsukiyume and Rin. It hadn't wanted to waste time with him at all, it had a mission…

_Saya…_

"Shit!" Inuyasha turned on his heel and ran for the door, but a flash of movement, gray against the dim orange light from the inside of the house, stopped him short. He whipped around and drew Tetsusaiga, tossing aside the sheath. "Show yourself, coward!"

With the transformed sword and his body blocking the door, Inuyasha's shoulders rose and fell with his rough breathing. He faced the gardens, searching the shadows. A shape, slinky and lithe, materialized from out of the shadow of a decorative tree. A flicker of wet, bright white teeth gleamed. "Greetings, Lord Inuyasha," the fox said, taunting him in a playful voice with the ironic title. "A lovely evening, is it not?"

Inside the house the others, led by Shippo, had reached the doorway and slid it open. The fox kit was shouting Inuyasha's name.

"Shippo—stay inside and protect the others!" Inuyasha hollered.

"I can help!" Shippo protested through the door.

Inuyasha was about to shout for the kit not to bother, but in a small puff of tawny colored dust Shippo appeared at his side, crouched on all fours and glaring with fierce green eyes. "Why are you here?" he demanded of the fox.

The intruder stepped noiselessly out of the shadows and into the milky moon and starlight. He flicked his massive puffy tail and sat a few yards shy of the wooden steps that led up to the porch. The fox dropped into an awkward bow, laying his chin to the dirt and stone of the path surrounding Inuyasha's home. "I am Aojiroi Jinsoku, messenger of Shimofuri of the Middle Lands."

"We know you," Shippo told him, stiffly. "What are you doing here? Don't try anything—I'm stronger than when we first met!" Shippo bristled and growled comically, tensing beside Inuyasha. If the situation had been just a little more easy-going Inuyasha would've burst into laughter.

"I come in peace," Aojiroi said. He did not rise out of his bow. "I have been sent by Lord Shimofuri to retrieve young Lady Saya. Lord Sesshomaru is recovering from an illness in the Middle Lands. Thus I have been sent to—"

"I don't buy it," Inuyasha interrupted, snarling. "Now take your puffy-tailed ass and leave before I cut you down to size."

* * *

Inside, just past the front door, Akisame had hold of Saya, keeping her close and protected. Miroku and Sango's sons hurried about, gathering weapons. Kohimu pulled one thick, muscled arm out of his robe and grabbed up his bow and arrows. Tisoki snatched his sickle and stood guard near the door. Miroku passed off the new baby to Masuyo and ordered the boy to go find Sango, Kagome, and Kasai. His staff jangled as he came to stand with his eldest sons, ready to throw open the door to help Inuyasha and Shippo outside.

Koinu hovered over his sister and Saya, tense and ready to defend them, but also weaponless and caught with worrying over his mother, Sango, and Kasai at the other end of the house. Akisame pulled on his pant leg. "Koinu—what is it? We were just out there…"

"I don't know," Koinu replied, his white ears swiveling atop his head. "I think it's a fox though. That's why Shippo's out there."

The intruder's voice came then, introducing himself. Hearing it, Saya gasped and squirmed against Akisame's hold. "Jinsoku-sama! Jinsoku-sama!" she cried.

Akisame's grip on her tightened and she tried to cover Saya's lips with the palm of one hand. "Shhh! He's a bad guy Saya!"

Koinu scowled. "Let go of her, Aki."

"What's wrong with you?" Akisame asked, directing the question at both her brother and Saya. She released Saya and the little girl sprang up onto her feet, lurching for the door, only to come up short as Koinu grabbed her.

"Let go!" She turned and frowned at her cousin. She gestured with the arm and hand that Koinu wasn't holding. "It's Jinsoku-sama!"

"You know him?" Koinu asked, looking her in the eye. Beyond them, standing by the closed door, Miroku, Tisoki, and Kohimu were watching with fresh interest, caught between the exchange of the hanyou, one outside and the other inside.

Saya nodded vehemently. "Yes!"

Koinu knelt down to be nearer to her and lowered his voice. "How do you know him, Saya?" he asked, looking her carefully in the eye.

"He came to see Mama, Lady Ginrei and me. He told us about a wedding that I went to with Father." She fumbled at her robes and dug out the white stone, holding it up for Koinu to see. "He gave me this magic stone…"

"He works for the Middle Lands," Koinu dropped his voice into a whisper. "He works for Lord Shimofuri, Saya. He doesn't work for your father."

"But he said he's going to take me home!" Tears started to flow out of her eyes, her body started to shake. The excitement at the thought of seeing her mother, father, Hanone, and even Ginrei and Jaken once more overwhelmed Saya. She dropped the white stone onto the floor and cried out, watching as it clattered onto the floor and spun away deeper into the house after bouncing off Koinu's bare foot.

"He's lying," Akisame said. "Don't go, Saya."

"But I wanna go home!" Her pronunciation failed as her emotions climbed, growing out of control. "Mama and—and…Fa…"

Kasai appeared, followed closely by Kagome. The two new arrivals took in the scene with tired but stern expressions. Kagome carried her bow and quiver of arrows, smaller than Kohimu's, more designed for a priestess than a true, male archer. Kasai had her sword Burikko at her waist, thumping against her hip with each step.

Kagome moved to join Miroku and his sons closer to the door but Kasai paused when her foot, clothed in a thin white sock, fell on Saya's stone. Perplexed, she knelt and picked it up. She held it as she watched the interaction between Saya, Koinu, and Akisame continue, reaching a head.

Saya was fighting, tugging on Koinu, trying to break free of his restraining hold. Akisame stepped in and helped too, snatching Saya's other hand to give Koinu an even greater edge. Saya, being hanyou rather than only a quarter inuyoukai, was potentially stronger than they were, despite their greater size. Saya whimpered and sobbed, unwilling to believe that her cousins' caution might be the better road for her to take, as young and vulnerable as she was.

"I wanna go home!" she shrilled, sobbing hard. Her voice could surely be heard beyond the closed door. The fox outside would think they were torturing her, and Inuyasha's tolerance for the tantrum would also be short.

Koinu fell to his knees and pulled Saya into his lap, into an embrace. He turned his head, wincing as she beat her small, clenched fists on his chest, and spoke into her ear. "Saya! Listen to me! The fox's boss and your father might be enemies! He might be here to capture you and use you against your mom or your dad. He could've come to kill you…"

Suddenly Inuyasha cursed loudly, right outside the door. "Shit! Shippo! Where the hell is he?"

A puff of air flowed against Saya, Koinu, and Akisame's hair. It hit Kasai's cheeks and brushed briefly against Miroku, his sons, and Kagome by the door. Then, chaos.

Akisame screamed.

A shape had materialized, gray like ash, between where Koinu sat with Saya tucked to his chest and where Akisame was sitting. It was Jinsoku Aojiroi, the intruding messenger fox. Miroku shouted with alarm for Inuyasha. The screen door rattled open and a second puff of air swept through the room as Shippo teleported to a position directly at Kasai's side.

The messenger lunged not for Saya or Koinu, but for the unprotected Akisame. The pureblooded youkai easily restrained the young girl, even in his fox form. His paws became more prehensile, and his dew claw enlarged, becoming a makeshift thumb as he pinned Akisme in his furry arms.

"Aki!" Koinu hollered. He'd scooted away on instinct while holding Saya, but now he froze, his muscles trembling, caught between protecting everyone, getting Saya away from the fox, and dashing in to save his sister.

Inuyasha barged in through the door. The massive, transformed Tetsusaiga came with him, barely fitting. The hanyou cursed violently and tugged Kagome, forcing her to stand behind him. "Hey asshole! What happened to coming in peace?" His ears quivered atop his head, his golden eyes were wide.

Akisame strained against the fox's hold, pried at his paw-hand at her mouth. Aojiroi stared at Inuyasha and the others over the top of Akisame's head coolly, as if he'd barely noticed the tension of the scene. "I have no intention of harming her. I simply needed assurance that I would not die by setting foot inside." His yellow eyes slid to Saya. "Young Lady, I am here to return you to your father, to Lord Sesshomaru."

Saya pushed on Koinu's chest and arms, squealing. "Let me go! Let go, Koinu!"

"Don't let her go!" Inuyasha snapped without taking his eyes off the fox. "He's full of shit."

"On the contrary." The kitsune smiled wolfishly through his full, long fox snout. "I am quite truthful."

"You said Lord Sesshomaru was sick," Shippo said. His tawny furred tail remained puffy and bristling with his fear and determination to defend his friends. "That's a lie! Inuyoukai don't get _sick,_ not unless they're close to death."

"Shippo's right," Miroku put in, sternly. He had his staff lowered in a position that would allow him to use it with a thrusting motion like a sword or to throw it like a spear. "Inuyoukai do not become ill usually unless it is fatal."

"And Shimofuri hated Sesshomaru!" Shippo's face had twisted with ferocity. "Sesshomaru kept Tsuki as a hostage, he lied. Shimofuri wouldn't protect Sesshomaru, not after that."

Jinsoku's expression, the quick flicking movements of his gaze, belied nervousness. A liar would be nervous in that moment of accusation, but so would a truthful messenger who heard a theory that, although untrue, made too much sense. And it spelled his doom. His grip over Akisame tightened and the girl closed her eyes. Her hands, restrained by Jinsoku at the elbow, reached out and scratched viciously at the fox, drawing blood.

The fox hissed with pain but shook his head. "I have come here telling the truth. Lady Saya—your father was very ill but he is recovering in the Middle Lands. Your mother is alive as well. Lady Ginrei and Lady Hanone are in the Middle Lands as well…"

"How perfect," Kohimu muttered.

"Just like a fairytale," Kagome observed, solemnly. Her gaze was glued to Akisame. One hand clutched her bow, the other Inuyasha's bicep. She longed to take aim and purify the fox to free her daughter, but if she missed she might kill Akisame. The arrow wouldn't kill her with spiritual power, but it was still an arrow, a lethal weapon. She was trapped, as were Kohimu, Tisoki, Miroku, and even Inuyasha. All of them risked hurting or killing Akisame if they attacked the fox.

"I wanna go home," Saya keened in a high voice, almost wailing. She searched over the fox, her lips trembling. The words of the others scratched at her, burning like an acid bath. Some of it had passed by too quickly for her to understand it, but she gathered that her father had been ill—though Shippo and Inuyasha said that wasn't possible. _Not unless he was close to death._

She heard Koinu's heart pounding; she could almost smell his fear for his sister. She stopped struggling against him, but her tears didn't stop. She wanted to believe Jinsoku, but seeing his blurry image through her tears brought no comfort. He was holding her cousin hostage, causing Koinu and Inuyasha and Kagome unbelievable grief. How could he be friend, not foe? She remembered Odaku's hands manipulating her, pulling on her, ripping at her clothes…

"Let go of Akisame! Let go of her!" Saya wailed.

The fox ignored her, though he did tense and glance over at the little hanyou, alarmed. He wasn't about to relinquish Inuyasha's daughter. She was the only thing that kept him from being shot by Kohimu's arrow, torn apart by Tisoki's sickle, vaporized by Inuyasha's Wind Scar, impaled by Miroku's staff and Kasai's sword, and slashed to bits by Koinu's claws. There were six fast ways to die, maybe more, and only one way out and that was with Saya.

"I am telling you the truth! Lord Sesshomaru has taken shelter with Lord Shimofuri! He has sent me to rescue Saya while he goes after Lady Rin…"

"Bullshit!" Inuyasha bellowed. "You and Shimofuri are just here to take Saya hostage! She told me about an earthquake. I don't know what the hell happened to Sesshomaru but as far as I'm concerned _no one_ is taking that kid away from me. I'll only hand her over to Sesshomaru or Rin. Got that?"

Jinsoku turned his eyes on Saya, trying one last time to get through to someone. "Lady Saya, your father has sent me to take you to him! He is waiting for you!"

Saya opened her mouth to speak, but Inuyasha spoke over her, his voice a powerful boom that echoed through the house. "Don't listen, Saya." He advanced a few steps, extending Tetsusaiga out as if he could give Jinsoku a good shave with the curved tip of the fang blade. His face twisted with a pained, bitter expression as he finished his thoughts in a low, bitter voice. "Sesshomaru's dead, isn't he?"

"No!" Jinsoku yelled, his mouth agape. Even while stunned and scared senseless, the fox's mouth with all of its sharp white teeth looked sinister and sly, the smile of a liar.

"Did Shimofuri kill him?" Inuyasha spat. His ears fell flat; the gold color of his irises seemed to expand, leaving no white at all.

"No! My lord would never do such a thing! Lord Sesshomaru is alive!" Jinsoku flinched backward and Akisame made her move. The girl bit into the fox's paw, hard. Her sharp canine teeth pierced the skin and the fox cried out, releasing her on instinct before common sense could stop him.

Akisame flung herself at her father's legs, clinging to him.

Kohimu's arrow released, the bowstring thrumming loudly. Kagome's followed it in a blast of purple. Both arrows passed through dust. Aojiroi Jinsoki had vanished.

Breathing hard, growling with rage, Inuyasha let out a frustrated shout. His face was set in a hard, pinched look. Tetsusaiga wobbled, revealing how shaken the hanyou was underneath. He had come away from the interaction certain that Sesshomaru was dead, and Rin probably as well. Shimofuri was either responsible, or he was simply taking advantage of the deaths by claiming Saya. He pictured Sesshomaru right where Kohimu and Kagome's arrows now stuck out of the wall. The Lord of the Western Lands lifted his head slightly and stared at Inuyasha for the faintest second—then he was gone. _Brother…_

Biting his lips together, Inuyasha sheathed Tetsusaiga and his shoulders sagged. "Miroku—would you mind checking outside for him, just in case he isn't really gone?"

"Of course," Miroku murmured. The somberness of the monk's face and the sadness in his violet eyes as he sought out Inuyasha's gaze and couldn't find it revealed that he understood something of the pain the hanyou was feeling. He motioned to Tisoki, Kohimu, and Kasai. They moved out of the front door, which had stood open the entire time. Shippo bounded after them in his fox form, making himself useful.

Kasai had stayed, lingering. As she sheathed her own sword at her waist, she stooped down to where she'd dropped the white stone earlier when Jinsoku had appeared. She stepped forward to where Koinu and Saya were sitting, hunched over the floor. "Saya," she called, gently. "I think this is yours…?"

Saya, laying half on the floor and half in Koinu's lap, looked up. She was shaking, her jaw moved, shattering her teeth and her shoulders heaved, lifting up and then sinking back down as she made gasping sobs. Her golden eyes moved first over Kasai's face and then down to the white stone in the young slayer's palm.

Jinsoku had given her the magic stone and Saya had carried it with her through the village, whispering wishes on it. One of the wishes she'd often whispered at it had been a plea. _Let me go home. Let me see Mama and Daddy again._ Only when she talked to the stone did she dare use the affectionate term _daddy._ She had entrusted her hopes and fears into the stone because Jinsoku had said there was magic inside it…

Her features hardened into a bitter, hateful snarl. She hit the side of Kasai's hand with her palm, knocking the stone to the floor. Viciously, Saya slapped at it, revealing hidden strength as her claws scratched the floor, slashing deep gouges into the wood. The stone skittered away over the smooth kitchen floor, thumping on the opposite wall and clattering to a stop. Kasai stumbled back, her violet eyes wide, stunned by the little girl's violence. Kagome and Inuyasha watched tensely from several feet away where they were looking over Akisame for wounds.

Saya turned from where the stone had come to a stop and stared instead at Inuyasha. His words rushed through her head:_ "Sesshomaru's dead."_

Gasping, she yelled, "Is Daddy dead?" A hollowness opened up inside her chest.

Inuyasha closed his eyes and then turned away from her, unable to answer her or meet her gaze. Even Kagome avoided it; instead she pulled Akisame close to her and hugged her, fighting tears for both Saya and her own daughter.

Kasai shook her head and stammered, "Saya, I'm sure your father is fine…"

Saya stared at the floor and reached out; touching the gouges her claws had left on the floor. She started to whimper and shake. "I—I wanna talk to Daddy. Uncle Inuyasha. Let me talk to Daddy…"

"Saya…" Kasai started, but the little girl interrupted her.

"Where is my Daddy?" She got to her feet and stumbled away from Koinu, moving shakily for the door. "Mama?" she shrieked. "I wanna see—" She tripped over her own feet and collapsed in a heap. On the floor she curled into a ball and started to sob uncontrollably, covering her face.

The others watched her, unsure and unable to help the small girl mourn. On some level they had all—except for Akisame perhaps—guessed that something serious, likely death, had brought about Saya's abandonment. Now the reality of it smashed into them and it was a dark, horrific thing. And for Saya there was no comfort they could give. Saya had never suspected that her father might be mortal on some level, but if Inuyasha suspected it and if Jinsoku wasn't a friend but an enemy, then surely it was true. Inuyasha was no fool and Saya couldn't doubt what he'd said.

Her father was dead.

* * *

Again I have no preview. I spent yesterday writing a chapter of my novel instead so I'll stick it in here randomly. You'll have no idea what's happening but oh well I suppose!

_Akizae laid her hand over Turima's arm, grasping the gun. Toward Zaishe she lifted her hand in a silent order for Zaishe to halt. "Hear us out, Zaishe. The Sisterhood has no desire to lose you and your sister both. We have come to offer you a choice, Zaishe. You can save Sheeza if you work with us. The Sisterhood's first desire is to see that the Nushin dies. If you will lead us to the Nushin, we will spare Sheeza."_

_Zaishe's pace faltered and she wobbled over the white stone, trying to think, to comprehend Akizae's words. Was it worth considering? Zaishe's breaths came in rough, ragged bursts. Her view of her aunt and her cousin blurred, rippling and snapping out of focus. She shook her head again and worked her mouth in frustration, trying to speak. Finally she asked, "And me?"_

_There was a pause and Zaishe sensed their stiffness, their hesitation. It was all the answer she needed. In the eyes of the Sisterhood she had purpose, but she had no future. Turima's arms were still raised, the gun aimed at Zaishe, following her every wobble and motion. If Zaishe turned down their offer Turima would gladly execute her._

_"Zaishe, please," Akizae called, her voice high and pleading but also genuine. "I wish things had gone differently. We are not your enemy. We are the Sisterhood, we are __family. The Nushin is the true villain here. He can never understand you as we do, Zaishe. We are all bound by the same powers, the same gift and stigma. To the Nushin you are nothing but a peculiar __Witch. A monster—how long will he keep you at his side? How long will it be until he turns on you simply for being one of us?"_


	24. Change of Direction

A/N: I set my keyboard to Spanish. It has changed the symbol keys on my keyboard, meaning I can write things like ñÑÇ¿¡ºª´´¨¨ but they aren´t marked. It really sucks. But I have to do it (though I can turn it off) because my professor expects us to write in perfect accent marks and crap. I am really lucky that the period and comma spots are the same, otherwise I would have a heart attack. So hopefully you can see I have been legitimately busy on my absence. Español sucks mucho.

¡Hopefully this new chapter appeases! Next chapter I plan on bringing Rin home, the moment so many of you have long awaited, Sesshy seeing Rin again…

Disclaimer: I do not own them but Saya is mine! Waha, wahahaha. Of course if I said that to her daddy I think he would tear me into five pieces.

Last Chapter: Shimofuri caught onto Rin's scent. The fox Aojiroi Jinsoku came for Saya but Inuyasha refused, unable to believe Jinsoku's story. To avoid being killed on the spot, Jinsoku took Akisame hostage. He told Saya he would take her to her father but Inuyasha and the others didn't believe him and became convinced that Sess was in fact dead. They sent Jinsoku packing, lucky to have his life, and afterwards Saya tossed away the white stone he gave her some time ago in grief. She pleaded to see her parents and then collapsed sobbing, mourning her father because she has no reason to doubt Inuyasha's interpretation.

* * *

**Change of Direction**

The sky changed, illuminated by the rising sun in slow motion. During the night a wind had crept up, whipping at Rin's legs and hair. Distracted by her hunger and the multitude of new scents that her acute inuyoukai nose could pick out on the wind, Rin didn't notice that the stars had gradually been blotted out as the curtain of cloud cover descended. In the dimness of the dawn, Rin caught the flicker of lightning in the distance.

The sea roared nearby, crashing onto the beach. Rin could smell the rankness of salt in the wind, the fishy stink of the ocean. Had Inuyasha really lived so close to the beach, or had she just never been able to hear and smell it before? At any rate a storm was blowing in, setting the wind howling and the waves building into white crests. The changing weather made Rin's spine tingle with tension. For the first time in her life she was aware of the change in air pressure, aware that danger was coming out of the sky before her eyes gave her any evidence.

When the sun rose, the light only confirmed the tingling in her spine. The clouds were heavy, thick, and black. Low, somber rumbles rang in her ears.

She had strayed from the main pathway during the night, compelled by desires she didn't understand and scents she couldn't interpret. She could recognize animal scents and differentiate them from inuyoukai scents, but her inexperience left her hopelessly confused. Like a child she wandered from the path, driven by curiosity, and then kept going when she realized that she'd lost sight of the road.

The scent that had taken her interest had been male and inuyoukai. A horrible thought reached her when Rin first stumbled on it. Would her new nose know Sesshomaru's scent? Would she even recognize Saya by scent? She doubted that it was Sesshomaru's scent, but it filled her with conflicting drives and needs. She needed to stay east while heading south, but the scent went north. Part of her wanted to turn and follow it, sensing an ally, yet the analytical higher parts of her brain found nothing familiar in the scent. The inuyoukai was more likely than not a rogue.

Once, as a young girl in Jouka Palace while Sesshomaru had been away as he so often was, Rin's old teacher, the inuyoukai Kuenai, had taken the time to educate her on rogues. Rogue inuyoukai usually became feral in his experience. They were likely to bond with wolves, weasels, bears, and perhaps even cats. Hanyou often resulted from such mixes, horrible, grotesque deformities according to Kuenai. Occasionally the rogues took to humankind, protecting them as equals. Other times rogues stayed solitary, wandering the wilds alone. When war broke out they usually returned to the place of their origin and pledged service to whatever clan family they favored. One such rogue was Daken and his relative Oushi, who always appeared in times of need to serve Lord Sesshomaru.

If the unfamiliar scent was Oushi or Daken, encountering them would be worthwhile, but any other rogue would happily attack Rin. Especially if the rogue guessed her identity.

Rin chose the safer route and continued south, shadowing the shoreline.

An hour after sunrise the daylight had yet to overcome any of the cloud cover. The world remained dark, shrouded in gray. In spots where the trees parted enough to let Rin see the sky, she found herself peering up into the massive underside of a thunderhead. Occasionally white light flickered inside, making the air vibrate. Pine needles crunched beneath her feet, mold spores tickled her nose. The sensory world distracted Rin, immersing her inside itself.

She wasn't aware of the deadliness of such distraction until a slight shift in the wind brought her the scent of the rogue.

Whirling, wide-eyed, Rin searched the trees and sniffed. Her bare feet stepped backward and she crouched low, remembering her long years of training. "Show yourself!"

From around the green-black boughs of a short and squat cedar, a shadow moved, separating itself. It was fifty feet away from her, its shape obscured by the trunks of maples, pines, and beech trees. Rin's mouth felt suddenly dry as she realized that the creature must have been following her for a time already. It was too close for it not to have scented her and seen her even through the dark forest. The trees and the underbrush made it difficult for her to tell, but Rin suspected that the rogue was in his quadruped true form, that of a large dog.

"Who are you?" Rin asked, lowering her voice, trying to sound intimidating rather than frightened.

The shape, little more than a moving shadow, stepped out more clearly from the darkness of the distant cedar. Rin saw a tail flicker, half-wagging. Although the motion was one of friendliness, Rin didn't drop an ounce of her hesitation and tension. "Can you talk?" she demanded.

The rogue changed, dropping its head. Its shape wavered, disassembling, becoming incorporeal. It shortened and simultaneously rose in height. Rin took a step backward, steadying herself. Her follower was transforming into his bipedal form, the state that allowed for speech.

As his form condensed, taking shape, Rin felt a jolt of relief though she resisted it. He was too far away for her to see clearly, but she thought she recognized the gray tones in the robes he wore, the supple flow of his blue-black hair. He advanced on her, calling her name, and at last she knew for certain.

"Lady Rin…"

"Shimofuri," she breathed, closing her eyes with relief. She forgot all titles, all formalities. Briefly a nagging voice popped into her mind, reminding her that Shimofuri held an old grudge against Sesshomaru, but that seemed trivial. Kokoro had assured her in the other realm between life and death that Shimofuri had nothing to do with the plot against Sesshomaru. And at any rate Shimofuri was under threat too. Jishin aimed to take his lands, his whole inheritance away from him.

As he emerged in front of her, past the last leafy maple separating them, Rin felt a momentary urge to wrap her arms around the young inuyoukai lord in an embrace. Her journey had been harder on her than she'd imagined, filled with stressful changes and unfriendly human faces. As she had discovered in her childhood and reaffirmed time and time again, it wasn't humans that she belonged with, it was inuyoukai.

Shimofuri's words surprised her then, as did the twist of his features, the consternation she saw there. "Lady Rin," he spoke stiffly, "What's happened to you?"

Rin shook her head. "I'm not sure." She lifted her hands, noticing the glint of her sharp claws.

Slowly, cautiously, Shimofuri reached out for her face, but paused, gazing at her with his blue-gray eyes narrowed in hard concentration. "Forgive me," he murmured. "I have been following you since sunrise. I couldn't believe my own senses." His clawed fingers grasped a strand of her hair, making Rin blink in surprise.

_My hair,_ she stared at Shimofuri's fingers, at the short lock that he held. The color had changed slightly, a fact she'd noticed before, becoming glossier with a bluish hue more akin to Shimofuri's own. The length was gone too. Her hair had shortened, becoming almost a boy's length. It was still new to her, almost unbelievable.

Rin glanced between the strand of her hair and then into Shimofuri's face. Something flickered in his expression, a negative or painful expression that warred with his awe and confusion. Rin squared her jaw, tensing. She pulled back from him, breaking their small contact. The motion made Shimofuri look up and his mouth fell open in an immediate, blurted apology. "Please forgive my conduct, my lady. I—I'm just glad to have found you."

"Can you help me get to my daughter?" Rin asked, burying her unease.

Shimofuri pursed his lip. "I have already sent my most trusted kitsune messenger for young Lady Saya. I believe you know him, Aojiroi Jinsoku."

"Oh," Rin said, frowning.

"Aojiroi will escort Lady Saya to the Nanka where Lord Sesshomaru is waiting with Lady Ginrei and Lady Hanone." Shimofuri's gaze had moved to some spot a little above Rin's head, focusing on the air. His words were distant and highly formal. He gave the little girls titles; he gave even Sesshomaru a title, affording the lord more respect than he usually did.

_Odd,_ Rin thought, fighting the scowl that tried to cross over her face.

"I'd like to get Saya myself," Rin began, cautiously.

"Your mate requires you more at this moment," Shimofuri told her, stiffly. The negative twist reached his eyes and his mouth again, furthering Rin's unease. "Lord Sesshomaru was very ill. The illness has left him—" Shimofuri stammered over the last word, "_mortal."_

Rin paused, disbelieving him at first, but before she parted her lips to speak, Kokoro's words returned to her, swimmingly, as if from a dream: _"She has given him a poison that is remaking him from the inside out as we speak. It is transforming him into a human being. While he is weak, Jishin will have him killed."_

Her chest tightened with horror. "Is he safe?" she blurted, not even bothering to name her mate.

"He is with Lady Ginrei, my sister, and Jaken. My castle and my lands shelter him, but he feared that you had died, Lady Rin. You must go to him and give him courage to continue on."

Shimofuri's tone didn't give him away; it was what he didn't say and another memory of Kokoro's words. _Jishin was going to kill Amagumori, to use her as a way to dispirit Shimofuri and rob him of power…_

"Lady Amagumori?" Rin asked, spluttered. "Is she okay?"

For the briefest moment, Shimofuri's face hardened, becoming harsh and angry, even ugly. Then it cleared and he answered, "Your mate's wife killed her."

That had not been the answer Rin expected. A death that could be attributed to foul play by Shimofuri had been Jishin's plan as far as Rin had known. Now Amagumori's death lay squarely on Ginrei's shoulders, not Shimofuri. Did the marriage contract still stand? Would Shimofuri lose his birthright anyway?

"Lord—"

Shimofuri interrupted her stiffly. "We must hurry." He pushed past her and started at a swift walking pace, heading south. The wind ripped demandingly at his legs and hair. The sky was growing darker.

Rin blinked, startled as the first sprinkled raindrop smacked into her forehead. The sweet smell of rain rose from the pine needles as more droplets hit the earth.

With a deep breath Rin set out after Shimofuri, distinctly troubled.

* * *

Saya woke to the sound of a baby's crying, a long and wet wailing. At first the sound left her disoriented. At Jouka there had been times that Hanone would fall or get scared and she would begin to cry like a tiny baby until Ginrei came and cuddled her. As Saya opened her eyes, she expected that the warm female body lying next to her would be her mother—but her nose told her clearly otherwise. The room was dark, the windows shuttered against the daylight beyond.

Whimpering, Saya scooted away, only to bump into another warm body. She looked between the two forms and fought her initial fear and panic. Although the woman was not related to her, the other sleeper was. Memory returned and she recognized where she was, what had happened. The woman that she first mistook for her mother was actually her aunt. The other sleeper was Akisame, her cousin. Laying at the edge of the bed was Koinu, his white dog ears flicking in his sleep. There was no sign of Inuyasha.

After Aojiroi had vanished into the dark and Saya had begun to cry and grieve, exhaustion took over. Like a zombie Saya took a bath with Kasai and Kagome helping her, and then she went to bed. Her memory of the bath, of her aunt's face and the young slayer girl's hands. Of the overwhelming smell of the soaps that Kagome used on her. Awake now, Saya looked down at her clothes and found that they were fresh and clean but foreign to her. The soiled robe that her mother had dressed her in the day of the earthquake, and that the villagers Sao and Taki had returned to her, was gone. Although it hadn't been comfortable, Saya missed it because it had connected her to her mother, to Jouka.

The baby's cries kept Saya from relaxing. Restless, she crawled to the end of the bed and padded over the hardwood floor, her bare feet pattering. At the sliding door, which had been left partway open, Saya poked her head outside into the hallway, sniffing and listening. Faintly she picked up an old smell, a scent of something unbearably sweet, like vanilla. She whimpered, fighting sudden tears at the ancient, instinctual memory. She didn't understand it, but the scent that had reached her was breast milk, and it immediately brought on visceral sensory memories of her mother.

If she had been in the human village alone, or even still wearing her filthy robe, Saya might've given in and cried, but she wasn't made for endless despair. She had come from fierce stock, men and women and youkai alike that fought for everything they accomplished. Her uncle who had refused to die, her father who had faced invading armies alone, her mother who had the courage to befriend demons over humans.

Saya pushed the door open the rest of the way and plodded down the hall, listening to the gentle, quiet flow of voices from the sitting room and the kitchen. She picked out her uncle's scent and that of the monk. The baby's cries and the milk smell emerged from the bedroom where the slayer woman had given birth the previous night.

Saya paused near the closed door to the room with the baby and the demon slayer mother. The milk scent distracted her, slowing her progress. When other footsteps came over the floor she didn't notice until the monk was above her, peering down at her with a tired smile over his lips. Heavy rings of fatigue encircled his eyes. "Well, well," he half-purred with surprising energy considering how tired he appeared. "What are you doing up so early, Lady Saya?"

Saya didn't catch the sympathy in Miroku's gaze, the way he searched her face, trying to see through her, looking for grief or memory, a sign of the trauma she had undergone the previous night. Saya didn't give him any.

"The baby," she murmured, pointing to the door. She sniffed and made a face at the milk scent. "Your son…?" she asked, hesitantly meeting his eyes.

Miroku's smile changed, becoming a little darker. "Yes, my newborn son."

"Mama wanted a son," Saya recalled, sighing.

"She wanted you too," Miroku told her reassuringly. "I remember."

Saya averted her eyes, focusing instead on the monk's bare feet, the color and visual texture of his robes. Behind him she spotted a flash of red and looked up, grinning unrestrainedly as she recognized her uncle.

"Go help Sango," Inuyasha growled. "Get the kid to stop crying." When Miroku tossed the hanyou an unhappy glare for his rude terminology regarding the innocent newborn, Inuyasha snorted and his ears laid flat. "Feh! _Baby _then. Get the _baby_ to stop crying."

Like Miroku, Inuyasha appeared tired, but compounding his fatigue was also a foul, dark mood. He hadn't slept during the night after the fox had come and gone. The thought that Sesshomaru and Rin had probably died, leaving him with Saya and potentially under some unseen threat, had all worked together to rob him of any desire to relax.

As Miroku left the hallway, heading for Sango and his newest son, Inuyasha stepped forward and knelt, wordlessly scooping Saya up into his arms. Saya wrapped her arms around his neck and stared over his shoulder into the sitting room. Kohimu, Tisoki, and Kasai were scattered around the table. Tisoki and Kasai were sleeping on the cushions, but Kohimu was awake, slicing vegetables on the table in preparation for breakfast. Although Saya couldn't know it, Shippo had volunteered in the early hours of the morning to patrol around the village, searching for any signs of Aijiroi Jinsoku. If that yielded no answers, than Shippo would leave for the Middle Lands to hear the rumors and gossip, perhaps even visit Tsukiyume to learn the truth.

"Is anyone else up?" Inuyasha asked her, quietly. His voice was hoarse and dry, but his arms were warm and strong. He emanated a similar physical strength in body and scent as her father had, but unlike Sesshomaru, Inuyasha took part in the menial parts of her life. He was more accessible than Sesshomaru.

"No," she murmured.

"Are you okay?" he asked, genuinely concerned. His ears flicked, brushing one side of her head.

Saya stayed focused on her uncle's presence, his protection, and his fatherly touch. There was a void within her, a yawning terror that tried to open inside her chest at the thought that her father could be gone. But for now she kept it at bay by living in the moment, an unconscious and unplanned action that made survival a lot easier.

"Yeah," she mumbled. Then, brightening, she asked, "Can Uncle cook for this one again?"

Even through extreme fatigue, Inuyasha laughed, though it was short and harsh. "You got it, kid."

* * *

A night had passed in the Nanka since Shimofuri had left and Soeki had attacked, leaving Ginrei and Sesshomaru injured. Ginrei's injury had already closed, leaving little more than a red, tender mark over the pale skin of her throat. Sesshomaru's wound, however, was quite a different matter. His mortal body attacked the wound, walling it off, closing it from infection with inflammation. As a result he sweated with pain and stayed disturbingly pale.

He slept behind the screen fitfully, despising his weakness, grinding his teeth when he became hungry yet again. By morning a fever had begun lightly and the wound ached even more than it had when it was first inflicted. Sesshomaru didn't rise when Ginrei, Hanone, and his mother brought breakfast. He didn't answer their calls, but remained shivering beneath his blankets.

Shiroihana attended him, bringing the food silently. Her sky-blue kimono hovered before Sesshomaru's gaze, a dreamy mirage. Ancient memories flew through his mind. Holding onto her, feeling her hands on his hair, watching with awe as she had painted or wrote with the black ink on her brush. She had always enjoyed the color blue, contrasting with her bright white hair and her sharp, hawkish gold eyes. Forgetting the hundreds of years between his time as a tiny pup and his position as Lord of the Western Lands, Sesshomaru tried to touch her and his throat moved as he tried to make a pup sound, a cry for comfort or help.

But his human throat could not make the noise. It came out as a squeaked moan and the sound startled him. He blinked, afraid for a moment, thinking there was an intruder, failing to realize that he had made the noise himself.

"Hush," Shiroihana murmured. She pushed on his shoulder, rolling him over onto his side. Sesshomaru's human brown eyes stared up at her, failing to recognize her for a moment. Then he tried to push her touch away.

His efforts were pathetic, barely scratching Shiroihana's smooth skin. She rolling Sesshomaru onto his side and probed fearlessly at his bandages. They were tinged gray with his sweat and pink with oozing blood from the wound. Shiroihana's face stayed calm, even cold as Sesshomaru tried to concentrate, to watch her and stay in the present time, rather than slipping into the long ago past.

The memories of that time were the only purely pleasant ones he had of her. It was a short time, only a few years during which she had nursed him. After that time she had grown to be more his teacher. Her affection for him had always been odd, distant, but unquestionable. If Shiroihana did not like someone she didn't waste her time with them, as Sesshomaru knew very well. She had left Japan behind because she felt slighted by the beautiful Izayoi. The insult that her husband's bastard son and lover still roamed Japan had driven Shiroihana away from her land and her son, but she had returned when she heard of Saya and Hanone's birth four years previously.

She was his own mother, but Sesshomaru had a difficult time trusting her or fathoming her. The same, to a certain extent, was true of his father, who had also been distant. He had known no other influence.

Shiroihana left him, slipping like a phantom outside of the screen. Her voice floated to him, quiet as the brush of a spider's legs over its silken web. "Send for that little youkai—fetch a physician. My son is in need of treatment."

"Mother, do you mean Jaken?" Ginrei answered, formally.

"Don't call me that," Shiroihana grumbled. "And yes, the imp. Get him."

* * *

As soon as Ginrei had returned, successfully passing on Shiroihana's message to Jaken, the inuyoukai woman left Ginrei alone in the room with the shivering Sesshomaru and sleepy Hanone. She moved down the hallways until she found the room where the hanyou girl stayed. A servant stationed outside yelped with surprise at her sudden arrival and tried to bow and greet her, but Shiroihana impatiently pushed the little mortal woman aside. She threw open the screened door and burst into Tsukiyume's room.

The injured hanyou girl was deeply asleep, lying in tangled covers. Her jaw muscles flickered in her sleep, her eyelids twitched as her eyeballs moved in their sockets.

Shiroihana turned her head slightly to regard the servant woman waiting at the entrance awkwardly. "I will wait for her to waken here. Close the door."

"But my lady, Lady Tsukiyume has been attacked when we have trusted guests before—forgive me but…"

Shiroihana's lips curled in disgust. "Stupid woman! If I had wanted to kill her I would've done it already!"

The servant woman flushed bright red and bowed, apologetically. She backed out of the doorway and slid it shut partway, but she didn't close it. Shiroihana stared at it with irritation as she sat down beside Tsukiyume's bed and waited.

An hour passed swiftly and Tsukiyume lay inert, deeply dreaming. Shiroihana spent her time examining the room, the scents, the sounds of the servants and the construction of the wood, the push of the breeze from outside. Light spilled in through the open screens of the window, bringing a fresh scent of summer grass pollen.

At last Tsukiyume took a sharp inhalation and her eyes sprang open, a rich brown like peanut butter. She sat up with alarm as she took in Shiroihana's presence and tried to speak without thinking. "What are you…" her voice faded as she touched her jaw and grimaced with pain.

"So you remain mute, girl?" Shiroihana asked.

Tsukiyume frowned, a face of frustration. "No, it only hurts a little."

"Perhaps you would prefer that I call for ink and paper? You could write what you have been dreaming about."

Tsukiyume's ears swung to and fro, she shook her head, confused. "How did you know?"

"That is not important," Shiroihana assured her, sniffing. "Shall I call for paper, or will you speak what you have heard from the monk?"

Tsukiyume's expression hardened with determination. She shifted on the bed, trying to bow. "I will speak, it will be quicker."

"Good. What has the monk said about Sesshomaru? Will he recover from this spell?"

Tsukiyume nodded. "It isn't permanent. It will only be a little while."

"How long?" Shiroihana pressed.

"Days," Tsukiyume replied. "But the destructive sprit has possessed Uncle Sasugainu and gathered his armies. A lord from the north is also going to war to join Uncle. Together they plan to crush this castle before Sesshomaru recovers."

"Kanseninu," Shiroihana murmured, thinking. "That power hungry fool." Her gaze flicked to Tsukiyume and narrowed critically. "I believe your uncle is not merely possessed, he is dead."

Tsukiyume blinked, fighting emotion. "Yes—the spirit…"

"She is a goddess," Shiroihana corrected.

"The goddess," Tsukiyume said, biting her lips. "In order to kill her we must kill the two supporters in the north. But to maintain balance Lord Arasoizuki's son Boroya must be spared. An alliance is to be formed between the north and the Western Lands. Hanone and Boroya will be betrothed. Lord Sesshomaru will lose his wife and his daughter in order to achieve balance as well. Lady Ginrei will become her own clan, restoring Nishiyori's lost lineage. Hanone is to be passed to Lady Shiroihana. The clan must remake itself…"

Shiroihana's lips curled in a small amused smile. "Of course some of that I will disagree with, hanyou. The monk believes there is no way to kill the goddess, but he is wrong. Regrettably, I fail to see how we might keep Kanseninu and Yamome alive after this rebellion." She paused, sighing and poking at the rich white fur around her shoulders for a moment. "These alliances will only work if heirs are shared. Hanone is my heir, but if she marries the boy the Kosetsu will lose its future. As for my son's wife—your brother is not Sesshomaru's ally, correct?"

Tsukiyume shifted uncomfortably. "They are not on the best terms."

Shiroihana's smile deepened, growing crafty. "And how fortunate that he is now a bachelor! My son must be generous and reward your brother for his protection in this time of need. He will appease the dead and offer up his wife, giving her freedom and letting her join with another who has no other attachments."

The hanyou frowned, unable to hide her displeasure with Shiroihana's words. Seeing the expression, Shiroihana paused and asked, "You disagree, hanyou?"

"No—just, to speak of my sister-in-law's loss so casually…"

"Of course," Shiroihana said, but her tone was dismissive, uncaring. She didn't apologize. Her attention focused instead on the alliances she could form, the peace and stability the clan could generate. "Some of Ginrei's children will be your brother's heirs; others will form the new Nishiyori clan. If there is a shortage of pups, perhaps your brother will take on a concubine. But I'm certain she can produce hoards of offspring. She loves my granddaughter so much already…"

"She has to part with Hanone if she marries Brother," Tsukiyume pointed out. "I don't think she will."

Shiroihana closed her eyes, her face blanked, but she was only silent for a second. "She has no choice. The child is _mine_. She will see Hanone whenever she wishes to visit, but this is the way things must be."

"Aren't you concerned for Sesshomaru? Without Lady Ginrei he will have no wife, no way to have legitimate heirs of his own."

Shiroihana smirked, making a small clicking noise with her tongue. "No, his interests have been remembered by the dead. They have given him a new wife."

Tsukiyume's ears fell backward; she stared at Shiroihana with narrowed eyes. "You already know who?"

"Don't be so surprised, hanyou." Shiroihana's eyes clouded, un-focusing. She stared unseeingly into the space between them. "You are not the only one that can converse with the dead. In fact, I have been doing it far longer than you."

"Then have you told Lord Sesshomaru about Lady Rin?" Tsukiyume asked, leaning forward.

Shiroihana's smirk grew tenfold into a wide smile, almost a grin. "Of course not."

Tsukiyume sat back, blinking in consternation at the old, powerful inuyoukai woman before her. _How bizarre…_


	25. Shiroihana's Manipulation

A/N: This chapter ran long because I was trying to get to the moment when Rin and Sess see each other again, but Shiroihana interceded and had her way with me. Thus Rin made it home, but she didn't quite make it to Sesshy yet. I AM SO SORRY!! It will definitely happen next time.

Dislcaimer: I do not own them

Last Chapter: Rin and Shimofuri met up. Rin figured out that Amagumori had been killed. Sesshomaru got a fever from his wound. Shiroihana ordered a doctor for him and then went and spoke to Tsukiyume. Saya, resilient like all children, is still safe within IY's household. She clings to her uncle and struggles with the memory of her missing mother and father. Inuyasha sent Shippo to investigate the village and then the Middle Lands, to figure out what's _really_ going on there. Tsukiyume can talk again, and she revealed the basics of the plan made by those in the afterlife, on the other side of death.

* * *

**Shiroihana's Manipulation**

Before the door to Sesshomaru's room, Shiroihana paused and peered over her shoulder at the young hanyou girl behind her. Tsukiyume had dressed and although she appeared fatigued, she had recovered greatly from the attacks she'd suffered first from her uncle's assassin, then her sister-in-law, and finally her cousin Soeki. Apparently hanyou were very resilient beasts, but of course Shiroihana already knew that from her deceased husband's bastard hanyou.

"Hanyou," she murmured quietly. When Tsukiyume's ears swiveled, pointing sharply at Shiroihana with attention, she said, "Don't speak a word to Ginrei or to my son yet."

Tsukiyume frowned. "About what, lady?"

Shiroihana's voice dropped even lower, into a soft whisper. "The alliances and Rin."

Tsukiyume's frown turned deeper and almost angry. "Why not?"

Shiroihana's voice rose when she answered, sharp with irritation. "Do not question me, girl." Before Tsukiyume could protest, Shiroihana slid open the door and stepped inside.

Jaken, Ginrei, and Hanone were all gathered at the edge of the screen that separated Sesshomaru's bed from the rest of the room. From the window on the other side the light silhouetted the frame of a short, squat man onto the flimsy screen wall. Shiroihana picked out the scent of her son's human sweat and the doctor's sugary breath, as well as the sharp stink of herbs. She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

The others sitting outside the screen turned at her entrance, staring. Jaken turned and bowed, begging Shiroihana's pardon. Ginrei bowed as well, her silvered hair flowed over her shoulders like mist from a waterfall. Hanone mimicked her mother.

"Take down that screen," Shiroihana ordered, jabbing one clawed finger at it. "I wish to watch the doctor work."

"My lady," Jaken protested, quivering. "Lord Sesshomaru wishes for privacy! It isn't fitting for us to see him…" he stammered, tapping his three-fingered hands together nervously and fidgeting.

"If you are uncomfortable, little youkai, then leave." Shiroihana turned her gaze to Ginrei. "Fold up the screen. Store it away." Without motioning at all to Tsukiyume, she added, "Hanyou, you should help her."

"Mother—it is against my husband's wishes," Ginrei replied, speaking with a strict formality.

"Your husband does not have the presence of mind or the power to challenge me at this time."

Jaken harrumphed and cried out, offended and astounded that Shiroihana would say something like that. He started to protest, but when she glared at him the imp fell silent, realizing that Shiroihana _might_ be more powerful than his own lord, at least in the present time. It was unseemly to do anything against Sesshomaru's wishes, but at the same time Jaken didn't want to leave his master, even if Sesshomaru would have preferred that no one see him while he was mortal and ill.

On the screen the doctor's shadow scrambled back when Sesshomaru struck out at him, clawing like an animal and giving a hoarse sound like a roar. His shadow joined the doctors on the screen as he sat upright and swayed unsteadily. His roar faded into a hoarse groan of pain and discomfort. He held onto his injured shoulder.

"Take down the screen," Shiroihana ordered again.

Tsukiyume stepped forward to obey. The hanyou's movement encouraged Ginrei. The two young women moved to either side of the screen and took hold of it. They pushed it and folded it into a single slab about the size of a doorframe. Ginrei, the stronger of the two, hauled it across the room and leaned it on the far wall.

Without the screen in place Sesshomaru turned and blinked at his mother, then began to glare. Sweat covered his brow, glistening on his nose and above his lips. "Mother?" he asked, referring to her informally, offering little respect.

Jaken, Ginrei, and Tsukiyume sat together away from the doctor and Sesshomaru, averting their eyes out of discomfort and respect. The doctor stayed quiet and also avoided looking at anyone directly in the eye. Only Hanone, innocent of the trouble in the room, looked unabashedly at everyone around her.

"I have come with good news, Sesshomaru," Shiroihana announced, smiling broadly.

Sesshomaru didn't answer her. His eyes clouded and he closed them, his head drooped. A fit of shivering took him. The doctor moved in like a vulture, sensing his distress, and began picking at the bandages on his shoulder. "These must be changed, my lord."

Distracted by his fever, Sesshomaru failed to answer. He tolerated the doctor's close presence while the man pulled on the bandages, removing them.

"If you can survive this illness, Sesshomaru, your condition will resolve itself," Shiroihana said.

"Mother, what do you mean?" Ginrei asked, looking up at the older inuyoukai woman.

Shiroihana's smile faded, replaced with a frown. "Don't call me that." She paused, shifting her weight from one foot to the other and stretching up one arm to stroke the fluff about her shoulders. "My son will return to his normal state. He will shed this mortal body and return to glory." She made a small noise, something like a laugh. "In the meantime I have grown tired of his skulking."

Shiroihana looked at Sesshomaru and grinned. "This exposure does you well, Sesshomaru! For this short time you will know what it is to be powerless as I take everything away from you."

Jaken squawked, instantly alarmed. "What are you talking about? What kind of mother says something like that?"

"Little youkai," Shiroihana murmured, amusedly. Jaken stared at her but Shiroihana's attention remained on her shivering son, never minding the imp. "There was a time I would have eaten a toad such as yourself rather than suffer such foolish questions."

"Mother," Ginrei called, hesitantly, timid, and almost pleading. "I don't understand what you're saying…"

Shiroihana closed her eyes, drifting inside her own thoughts for a short second. It was vital that Sesshomaru feel his own powerlessness, that he might learn to appreciate and honor the creatures around him in this time that were caring for him. It was the only way to construct an alliance in the new dog demon clan that would last. Shimofuri and Sesshomaru were on bad terms. If Shiroihana told Sesshomaru of Rin's change, of the full details of it, her son would gladly toss away Ginrei to take Rin in her place. He would give Ginrei up willingly enough, but he wouldn't _appreciate_ the loss, there would be no meaning in it. Without meaning Sesshomaru was likely to care very little about the alliance. In a later search for power he might go back on the alliance or insult Shimofuri in some way, perhaps by taking Tsukiyume hostage again—or even worse, one of Ginrei and Shimofuri's future pups.

If he thought he was losing everything it might balance her son's drive for conquest, forcing him to place more value on _individuals._ She had seen loss affect him powerfully before. It was a dangerous gamble, but Shiroihana had always gone with her gut, and her gut always called for manipulation. Inutaisho had never managed to bring out compassion in their son. Where he had failed, Shiroihana felt certain she had already succeeded once. She would do it again.

When she opened her eyes, Shiroihana saw her son peering up at her, grimacing with pain as the doctor applied herbal poultices to his wound, acrid smelling things designed to draw up the poison and infection. Her heart twisted slightly, aware that he would despise her when he learned that she had withheld information from him, but he already distrusted her and had for many years.

In the years after this deception she knew she would need to invest in healing their relationship. _He will hate me for this._ But being a parent was as much about love as it was about discipline and hardship. Shiroihana was not a coward; she would face the challenge head on.

"Hanyou," Shiroihana called.

"Yes?" Tsukiyume replied, mumbling the word. Her ears laid flat on her black hair.

"Take Lady Ginrei from here and entertain her for a time. I wish to stay with my son. There is much we must discuss."

"Lord Sesshomaru is unwell!" Jaken protested, shouting in astonishment. "You must let him rest!"

Sesshomaru quirked his head to one side when he heard Jaken's words, but he didn't have the strength or the necessary concentration to agree or disagree. Shiroihana's gaze moved over her son, checking the reaction, and then flew back to the toad. "You will stay here then and converse with me, little youkai."

Jaken's eyes bugged out, growing twice over in size. He bowed low to the floor. "Yes, of course most honorable mother!"

Shiroihana smirked at the imp. _You will not think that once I have told you that I am taking Hanone away and dissolving Sesshomaru's marriage._ But Jaken's feelings didn't matter to Shiroihana, they could only amuse her.

Ginrei gathered Hanone into her arms and left the room with Tsukiyume. As Shiroihana watched her go she considered ordering Ginrei to leave Hanone behind, but dismissed the idea. She needed to be cruel to achieve her purpose, but she liked Ginrei. She would delay causing the younger inuyoukai woman that pain for a time. Her hawkish golden eyes softened as she followed Ginrei's steps. _I'm sorry, little mother._

* * *

In the afternoon Saya's caretakers busied her with food preparation. The rituals and procedures were completely new and foreign to her. The blaze of the fire in the hearth, bright and beautiful, mystified her. Kagome, Akisame, and Kasai laughed at the way the little child stared in astonishment and cringed back when the fire cracked. She had seen fire before of course, but Saya hadn't ever been so close to a healthy, large cooking fire.

Kagome used a knife to prepare fish. Kasai worked with her, adding seasonings and running a skewer through the finished chunks for cooking. Akisame stole a bit of the skin and gnawed on it, which horrified Kagome.

"Put that down, Aki! That's disgusting!" Kagome brushed her hands, slimy with fish guts and oils, on her pants and tried to snatch the bit of skin from her daughter's clutches.

"Mom!" Akisame whined, evading her. She turned her back on Kagome and shoved the rest of the skin in her mouth. Saya was watching her with her golden eyes wide, alarmed as Akisame worked her mouth around, burying the crumpled fish skin under her tongue before Kagome grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her around.

"Where is it, Aki?" Kagome demanded.

Akisame shrugged innocently. "I don't have _any_ idea what you're talking about!"

Kagome's face darkened with suspicion. "Open your mouth."

Akisame obeyed, opening wide. Her tongue stayed flat, pressed tightly down. When Kagome squinted and leaned closer to examine her cheeks and then her tongue, Akisame pulled away, crossing her arms over her chest. "Leave me alone, Mom! I showed you I don't have it! You're imagining it!"

Suddenly uncertain, Kagome looked to Kasai. The young demon slayer girl controlled her smirk, reworking it under Kagome's scrutiny into a frown of disgust. Kagome asked her, "Did you see her put it in her mouth?"

"No," Kasai replied, not lying exactly. She hadn't _seen_ Akisame do it, but she knew full well that it was more than likely there. "Maybe she ate it already."

Kagome groaned and frowned at Akisame, who returned her mother's stare with a mischievous grin. "I'm serious, young lady. You're going to give yourself worms!" (A/N: yeah I know they eat sushi but I'm not so sure about fish skins. And at any rate, I can't get over my own Western view here with raw food. Uncooked food carries contagion! Of course Kagome is worried.)

"Worms?" Saya asked.

"Yes, parasites," Kagome answered, losing a little of her irritation when she remembered that they technically had a guest.

"Parasites?" Saya asked again.

"Like fleas," Kagome told her. "Or mosquitoes. Worms live inside your stomach and steal your food."

Akisame rolled her eyes, unimpressed. She moved her jaw awkwardly, trying to swallow the buildup of saliva in her mouth. "Dad says we don't get those," she grumbled.

"Your father is not a scholar," Kagome muttered, frowning. "Sometimes he has trouble with simple math."

Listening to this, Saya blanched with alarm. "Aunt Kagome?" she called, testing out the new title for the mother of her cousins.

"Yes, sweetie?"

While Saya distracted Kagome with questions, Akisame turned her back on her mother and started frantically chewing, working her teeth, grinding on the scaled fish skin. She grimaced when she hit one of the hard scales and a little raw fish juice squirted sloppily out of her mouth. She wiped at it in a panic, like a criminal trying to hide all evidence of her sin.

"Will Akisame get sick?" Saya asked.

"I hope not," Kagome replied, sighing.

"I don't think she will," Kasai added. "She's been eating anything that moves, and dead things, for as long as I've known her." She grinned at Saya, aiming her next words at the little girl. "It's so weird that she looks like Aunt Kagome but eats like Uncle Inuyasha. Koinu is really picky comparatively."

Kasai's words didn't appear to comfort Saya much. Upset, she looked to Kagome and blurted, "I saw it."

Akisame choked on her spit and coughed. "Shut up!"

"Mama always told me not to eat stuff like that," she murmured, shaking slightly.

"Don't yell at her, Akisame," Kagome ordered. "She's right."

Defiantly, Akisame swallowed the last of the skin and glared at Saya. "Tattle-tale!" Then her wrath shifted to her mother. "I had it under my tongue all along! And I swallowed all of it! And it was good and I'm not going to get sick!"

"Akisame," Kagome's voice took on a deeper, angry tone.

Suddenly Akisame blinked, paling as she realized she was about to be punished. "Momma—I was just playing!" she adopted a smaller, higher voice, making herself seem younger and less deserving of discipline, as if she could dissuade and manipulate Kagome into forgiving her with just cuteness.

"You need to listen to me, Akisame," Kagome lectured. "How am I supposed to teach you or protect you if you won't listen to me? And lying to me…?"

Akisame shook her head frantically, "I didn't! I mean—it was _just_ a fish skin, Momma!"

"I won't tolerate my daughter turning into a liar," Kagome snapped, driving the point home with the insulting term _liar._

"_Mom…"_ Akisame whined, starting to whimper with genuine fear and regret. _"I was hungry…"_

"You'll be cleaning after dinner tonight, Akisame. _Alone._" Before Akisame could protest, Kagome moved back to the cutting board, her knife, and the remaining fish. "Now get out of this kitchen and help Sango and Miroku. I'm sure the boys need to take baths. You'll help draw the water and carry it for them."

"_Mom!" _Akisame groaned.

"Go!" Kagome yelled.

Growling, Akisame turned and left, stomping as loudly as her small feet could manage. She glared at Saya as she left and the little girl flinched, whimpering.

Kasai, watching the last exchange while Kagome returned to cutting and scaling the fish, tried to reassure Saya. "She isn't really mad, Saya. She'll get over it."

"I'm sorry," Saya mumbled, sniffling.

"You know, she'd probably really forgive you if you went and helped her or just kept her company. She hates my little brothers. If you go and help keep them away from her I'm sure she'll be really grateful."

Kagome shook her head. "I think she should stay here, Kasai. She might get hurt if she goes out and plays with the boys."

Kasai laughed, shaking her head. "Aunt Kagome—_she's hanyou!"_

"She's four years old!" Kagome snapped. She twisted around to look back at the floor, opening her mouth to tell Saya not to go, but the words died on her tongue.

Saya was already gone.

* * *

The doctor came and went from the room while Shiroihana and Jaken talked, with Sesshomaru occasionally emerging from his feverish stupor to say something or ask a nonsensical question. Hours passed. As the light from outside changed, the shadows growing longer and narrower with the evening, the herbs in the teas that the doctor prepared for Sesshomaru started to have an effect. Sesshomaru fell into a still, deep sleep and his sweating reduced slightly.

Shiroihana told Jaken the plan for restoring the clan, something the imp, reflecting Sesshomaru, didn't much care for. The clan had done little to impress he and Sesshomaru, so why should they care to build it up again? Shiroihana reminded him that it had been Sesshomaru that destroyed one of the families and caused such strife. Sesshomaru had killed Arasoizuki and helped eliminate Nishiyori, which had started the great imbalance. Jaken refused to be swayed by this opinion, so Shiroihana tried a better one, one that would have convinced even Sesshomaru, though he never would've admitted it.

"You may not be aware of this, little youkai, but there are very few inuyoukai left. I have seen beyond these islands. On the mainland we are reclusive and inbred. In countries further west inuyoukai are exterminated. I passed through lands that had not seen the likes of myself in hundreds of years. We are nearing extinction. It was partly for this reason that I returned to these islands. I must safeguard my own people, and my own family as a matriarch, as one of the oldest inuyoukai left." She sat erect and proud, her backbone stiff with real pride. This news she had not had to tweak or change, the argument was real. Humans were steadily overrunning the youkai of all kinds. Inuyoukai were lucky to have lasted as long as they had.

Shiroihana wouldn't have cared one way or another about the clan because they had wronged Sesshomaru during the panther demon invasion, and her own particular family had been wiped out during a war in the days of Inutaisho, leaving her alone as the last representative of her side of the clan. Yet the threat to their whole species, and to her descendents, made even Shiroihana concerned enough to act.

Sesshomaru slept when Shiroihana announced that not only would she betroth tiny Hanone to Boroya of the north and adopt Hanone as her own heir, but Sesshomaru would have to annul his marriage with Ginrei, to give her to Shimofuri. The imp didn't take well to the news.

"What? My lady, how could you propose such a thing? Lady Ginrei is the source of Lord Sesshomaru's pureblooded heirs!" he squawked.

"It is not a proposal," she told him blandly. "It is what must be done."

"I will never agree with it and neither will Lord Sesshomaru!"

"Do not be so hasty to predict my son's decisions for him, little youkai. Sesshomaru owes the young lord here in the Nanka some penance. There will be another wife, of course." Shiroihana smiled dryly and lowered her eyes as if she were demure, not the manipulative, conniving creature that she truly was.

Jaken didn't let her fool him even for a moment. Her words weren't idle, a whim that she might entertain while Sesshomaru lied unconscious. Shiroihana got what she wanted when she wanted it and how she wanted it _always._ The question remained: _why did she want this?_ Losing his control and patience, Jaken blustered, "How dare you!"

"It is the proper thing for my son to do. He would benefit from an alliance with Lord Shimofuri." Shiroihana shrugged, adjusting the white pelt on her shoulders. "And it will be done."

"No one will cooperate with you!" Jaken huffed, "Lady Ginrei will oppose it. She will never leave Lord Sesshomaru or Hanone!"

"Nevertheless, it will happen this way for the betterment of the clan," Shiroihana murmured, still smiling. The expression had taken on a certain hardness and chill.

"You've lost your mind!"

Now irritation flashed in Shiroihana's golden eyes. "I tire of your impudence, little youkai." She appeared as if she might threaten him or try to convince him further, but then her attention strayed to the window. The sun's light was fading, growing pink as it set. Time was against her. "Will you tell my son of these plans when he awakens?" she asked, impatiently.

"Yes," Jaken answered, scowling deeply. "But I refuse to accept your suggestion! And both Lord Sesshomaru and Lady Ginrei will reject it as well!" He shouted after her as she rose and left the room. When she had gone the toad huffed to himself and mumbled, twiddling his clawed thumbs and staring at Sesshomaru where he laid motionless, barely even breathing in the depths of his sleep. Jaken growled to himself, disturbed, and moved to sit nearer to his lord, waiting.

He didn't wonder why Shiroihana had so abruptly left him. It didn't occur to him that something had happened; only that she was strange, beyond his ability to comprehend. He had once thought Sesshomaru was complex, but now he thought of his master as easily readable when compared to Shiroihana. Shiroihana was just insane…

* * *

Shiroihana's fingertips itched and twitched as she moved at nearly a trot through the halls. Her robes and her long, flowing white hair trailed after her. The fluff on her shoulders rippled with the air current her fast walking generated.

She came to the tearoom where Tsukiyume, Ginrei, and Hanone were seated. Ginrei was speaking, her voice rising and falling in intensity. It was a story. For half a minute Shiroihana paused near the entrance, closing her eyes and listening, trying to recognize the story. The names were foreign, it was a tale from the mainland. Although Shiroihana enjoyed such things, she pushed aside her interest and snatched the door, sliding it open.

The two women and the tiny child turned to regard her with open surprise. Ginrei spoke first, greeting her with a bow. "Mother, it is good to see you. How is my husband?"

"Sleeping," Shiroihana answered dismissively. Her eyes flew to Tsukiyume. "Hanyou, I must take you from here. Your brother has returned."

Tsukiyume blinked, her ears swung forward and back with astonishment. "How can you say that? No one has come to tell me of his return—he hasn't come back yet."

"That is unimportant." Shiroihana motioned at the hanyou. "We must go together and speak with him."

"Mother…" Ginrei started, but Shiroihana lifted her hand, interrupting her.

"Don't call me that. Go be with my son."

Ginrei frowned but tried to hide her confusion. She bowed. "Yes, my lady." Grabbing up Hanone, she rose to her feet and disappeared out the door.

In the silence that followed her departure, Shiroihana cocked her head, listening for the sounds of Ginrei's footfalls, making certain that the young inuyoukai woman was truly gone before she spoke to the hanyou unguardedly. Tsukiyume lost her patience before Shiroihana was satisfied.

"What do you really want?" she demanded.

Shiroihana glared at her. "I meant what I said. You must come with me and greet your brother. He has come with Rin."

Tsukiyume paused, her face twisting with thought. Finally she said, "You're going to stop shishi-sama and Lady Rin from seeing Lord Sesshomaru, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am." Shiroihana smiled.

"Why?" Tsukiyume asked, shaking her head in consternation. "You weren't afraid of letting everyone else see him!"

"It is not your brother that concerns me, only Rin." She paused, considering the hanyou girl before her for a moment. "If my son is to value his alliance with your brother, hanyou, he must value what he is giving away. He won't value losing his current wife if he knows a new one has emerged that he would have preferred anyway."

"He will never go along with your plan unless he knows about Lady Rin," Tsukiyume protested, alarmed but intrigued.

Shiroihana's smile didn't fade. "We shall see. Come, your brother and Rin cannot be allowed to enter the castle unmet."

* * *

Saya found Akisame in the backyard, beside a black-brown iron water pump. The seven year old girl was hopping as she pumped the water and grumbling to herself. Out in the high grass of the backyard, Masuyo and Riki were wrestling and shouting. The two small boys' faces appeared in brief spurts above the level of the grass, and then vanished into it again. They shouted attacks that they didn't know but had heard their parents mention, both pretending to be the demon slayer attacking the youkai.

Other sounds reached Saya from her left as she exited the household, stepping onto the veranda. Inuyasha's home was simpler than Jouka Palace where Saya had grown up until the earthquake. Jouka had its own pastures, a massive garden, and stables. Inuyasha's home was mostly just a home, but when Saya turned and stared at the noises coming from her left, she spotted an outdoor pavilion, a little fighting hall. She had never seen one before that wasn't decorative as Jouka had been a women's estate.

For a moment Saya gawked, squinting her eyes against the sun, watching the action taking place over the shaded wooden floor of the pavilion. She recognized her uncle reclining on one of the beams supporting the pavilion roof, scrutinizing the movement of the others. Koinu was there, pivoting, hopping, and ducking the blows of one of the monk's sons. A different boy, thicker and broad-shouldered, the eldest son, waited in line to take on Koinu. Although the human struck over and over at Koinu, the pup never retaliated. He parried blows, or more often sidestepped them altogether, but never attacked.

The metallic clatter from the pump came to a stop then and Akisame called to her grumpily, "Hey tattle-tale!"

Saya instantly looked back to her cousin and her face fell. She fell into a bow as Akisame approached her, lugging a wooden bucket filled with water. "This one is truly sorry for betraying you!"

Akisame stepped past her and onto the shade of the veranda. She set the water bucket down with a grunt and stared down at Saya with a mixture of surprise and frustration. Saya moved with Akisame, turning with an awkward shuffle of her knees as the older girl moved around her. After a moment Akisame blew out a long breath and her shoulders sagged. "Fine, whatever. No big deal."

"Does Saya's most honorable cousin forgive this one?"

Perplexed, Akisame blinked, frowning anew. "I barely understood that," she mumbled, sighing. "But yeah, get up!"

A boy's voice enveloped them then as Masuyo shouted, "Princess!"

Akisame groaned and knelt, hefting up her water. "Run," she grunted at Saya.

Saya looked between the approaching boys and Akisame, confused. "What?"

"Run!" Akisame repeated, and then hurried for the sliding door, slipping inside. The water bucket sloshed and splashed as she moved. Fat droplets escaped and splattered on the floor.

Saya started to get up, but Masuyo and Riki had already reached her. Masuyo led the way and fell into a clumsy, improper bow at the edge of the veranda in front of Saya. When Riki caught up to him, Masuyo snatched his younger brother's hand and pulled the boy down into a kneeling position. Riki resisted, trying to pull away, and Masuyo yelled at him, "You're supposed to _bow_ to a princess!"

Saya had been about to run from them as Akisame suggested, but now her curiosity, her deep inherent desire for knowledge, overwhelmed unthinking obedience. She sat down to be on the same level with the boys and asked, "What is _princess?"_

Masuyo lifted his head and spoke to her with his eyes closed. "Princess! That's you!"

Riki, still slapping at his older brother's grasp, whimpered and didn't offer an answer.

Saya cocked her head to one side, struggling to think _hard._ How many words were there to describe her? She'd heard unpleasant ones like _demon,_ and then _hanyou_ which still mildly confused her. Now _princess?_ She had seen people bowing to her mother or her father or Lady Ginrei before, so she understood it was a sign of respect and power. Princess was a positive term.

"Who are you?" she asked, daring to be bolder than was with her cousins or the adults.

"My name's Masuyo," the older boy, the same age as Akisame, replied. He pointed to his brother and said, "He's Riki." When he spoke, Masuyo still refused to stare at her. Although Saya could stare openly into his face, Masuyo kept his eyes closed, as if the light bothered him.

"What's wrong with your eyes?" Saya asked.

Masuyo lowered his head, hiding his face. "Father told me once that it's wrong to look a princess or any person of royalty in the face."

"Oh," Saya answered, though she still didn't understand.

"We are your servants!" Masuyo announced, excitement lacing his voice.

Riki, growing bored, had turned to watch the practice fight in the pavilion. His little mouth hung open in astonishment as he watched Kohimu and Koinu circling each other, stiff with tension and anticipation. Saya also turned her head, caught by the sounds of the fighters, the shouts, grunts, and the occasional slap of flesh on flesh.

"Princess," Masuyo called, recapturing Saya's attention. "What is your command?"

Saya stared at the boy where he was still bowing. It was a game for Masuyo, a sort of make-believe where he could be a glamorous warrior, not just a demon slayer. Saya, however, failed to grasp that he was playing and not serious. She sat still and chewed on her lip, disturbed that the boy wouldn't look at her directly and unable to think of something to tell him to do.

Luckily, before too much time had passed, the grating sound of the sliding door came up behind them and Miroku emerged. He was holding two wooden water buckets, coming out to pump more water. Masuyo and Riki both ran to help their father, giving Saya the chance to slip away inside the house. But the charge stayed with her. What on earth was she going to tell her "servant" to do anyway?

* * *

Rin didn't fail to catch the way that the Nanka had changed for her. The scent of the surrounding town was foul with human stinks like waste. On the castle grounds itself the air was rich with pollens from a garden, sweet smells from growing fruit, and the earthy scent of wood and stone, the building blocks of the castle. Guards, human and youkai alike, took notice of her in ways they never had before. The youkai, especially the dog demons, watched her avidly. Rin thought she saw hunger there, animalistic and needy but suppressed. When she'd been human she'd felt their eyes on her too, but in those days the emotion she saw in their eyes was curiosity, amusement, or rarely, disgust. The humans now watched her with reverence or even fear.

The thought of seeing Sesshomaru made Rin's belly clamp up with anticipation. She lowered her eyes, following Shimofuri almost timidly.

As soon as they entered the castle, maids appeared and knelt to remove their footwear and wash their feet. Shimofuri barely paused long enough for them to finish before he strode toward the first flight of stairs, heading deeper into the castle. His thoughts seemed distant, far away from Rin. Rin, waylaid by the maids, fell behind. Harried and unfamiliar with the castle layout, she found herself using her nose to navigate, a bizarre change. Humans relied so much on sight, but the inuyoukai were just as likely to use their nose as their eyes. For the first time in her life, Rin perceived the world as Sesshomaru would have, as even her own daughter would have to a certain extent.

She moved up the stairs, flowing over them. Maids passed her and stared from a distance, then averted their eyes, staring at the floor. At last, on the landing of the third floor, she saw Shimofuri waiting for her, his face twisted with displeasure. At first she felt upset, angry that he would have such an expression on his face. She assumed he was frustrated with her slowness—but _he_ had left _her_ behind!—but as she finished the last flight of stairs she saw that the source of his anger actually stemmed from…

Rin stopped and stared, frozen by a black, distant memory. Before Naraku had died, before Sesshomaru had moved her to Jouka Palace to educate her as if she were a warlord's daughter. Before those events, she could remember climbing up a long white stairway, an enchanted castle seemingly in the sky. Leading them had been Sesshomaru's mother, the inuyoukai woman that now stood before Shimofuri, barring his way.

The inuyoukai woman's gaze fell on Rin and though her lips showed nothing, Rin felt certain she saw a smile in the depths of her fiery golden eyes.

Tsukiyume was standing beside Shimofuri, holding his hand. "Brother, please, you must come with me. The servants have made dinner and Lady Ginrei is waiting with Hanone. We're to eat with them…"

Shimofuri's stare, narrowed and fierce, never left Sesshomaru's mother. "There's no time for banquets and celebrations," he barked. "I've brought Lady Rin back from the north to see—"

"My son is indisposed, currently." Sesshomaru's mother ignored Shimofuri's glare and focused on Rin. "Young lady, you are improperly dressed! You must come with me. I will see to it that the maids here provide you with the finest robes and a proper bath. Then you can join Lord Shimofuri, the hanyou, Hanone, and myself at dinner."

Rin had never scented Sesshomaru with her new inuyoukai nose, but the woman before her was unmistakably Sesshomaru's relative. Rin tried to force the new scent into memory, to analyze it, to learn all that she could. There wasn't anything in it that she recognized, which was a bad sign. How would she know if this truly was Sesshomaru's mother, and not some imposter? What if it was Jishin? What if Sesshomaru was already dead?

"No, I want to see Lord Sesshomaru now," Rin said, calmly but with a serious, somber tone that said: _I won't take no for an answer._

"If you insist, but my son cannot speak to you. He will not know that you've come to see him. It will be a waste." Sesshomaru's mother lifted her hand, stifling a yawn and shrugged, shifting the massive white fluff around her shoulders. "Come then, I'll take you to him."

"Brother," Tsukiyume murmured, pulling on his hand.

Shimofuri ripped his hand away and glared at her. "Tsuki—you just let this—_her—_inside? What's happened since I left? Why are you trying to stop…"

"Hush," Sesshomaru's mother snapped. "The hanyou had nothing to do with my arrival. I was sent here by my late husband's spirit."

Shimofuri bristled almost visibly and took a step closer to her, as if about to attack. "What is this nonsense you're saying?" he demanded.

She regarded him blandly, unafraid of his posturing. "I am a medium, much like your sister the hanyou." She laid one palm over the metallic necklace at her breast, lying over her sky-blue robes. "I am in contact with the dead on occasion with Meidou-seki. It was only with help from the other world that I knew exactly when to come here to prevent the death of my son," she paused and suddenly glared openly at Shimofuri, sneering. "You, I believe, left him here with only womenfolk to protect him! Womenfolk and an imp!"

Shimofuri blustered, confused and alarmed. "I never had to take him in and protect him in the first place, but I did! We stopped…" he stumbled, unable to say his deceased wife and cousin's name out of guilt, "…the first attack. There was another?"

Tsukiyume nodded at his side. "Yes, Soeki came and tried to kill Lord Sesshomaru. She hurt Lady Ginrei too. That's why Lord Sesshomaru is indisposed. He has a fever from his wounds."

"I disposed of Soeki," Sesshomaru's mother said, sniffing. When she spoke again she had inexplicably switched into a more formal, respectful tone. "I understand that Lord Shimofuri was away searching for Lady Rin. The attack was unexpected. Of course it is forgiven. Lord Shimofuri has done well to retrieve Lady Rin. Now, please," she motioned toward Tsukiyume, "enjoy the dinner that the hanyou and I have had prepared."

Tsukiyume tugged on Shimofuri's hand, saying, "Brother, please…"

Shimofuri, frowning, turned and glanced back to Rin. His eyes revealed his bafflement, his utter confusion at the turn of events. He nodded to Rin. "I trust that the lady will show you to Lord Sesshomaru as soon as you are properly dressed."

Rin nodded, but said nothing. As Shimofuri turned away to follow his sister, Rin knew that the young lord _didn't_ trust Sesshomaru's mother or the situation. Just as she did, he felt something _odd_ or _wrong_ in it. His words had been a poorly masked way of warning her before he succumbed to Tsukiyume's prodding. Now Rin was alone with the mysterious lady that had given Sesshomaru life centuries ago.

* * *

A/N I'm sorry again I didn't reach their meeting. But this chapter was already running long and I thought about cutting Saya's scene, but...couldn't bring myself to do it. Drop me a line! I don't bite!


	26. A Brief Reunion

A/N: Unlike last time, I'm hitting it off first thing with a meeting…of sorts…I felt bad for leaving that meeting just unwritten when I promised it last chapter.

Uh...a personal **note:** I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with my writing life. I mean at _this_ rate I'd be better off going to the Tech school and starting over without English to focus on Computer Code. These stories interest me, and it's cool to get the little bit of feed back that I do, but my ultimate dream is to publish my own work. I've written to a few agents and a lot of publishers trying to pitch my novel, one of three, and currently I had my heart set on one that has the same first name as me. I was like _It's Fate!!_ But almost two months have passed with no word at all! It's just PISSING me off! I'm really feeling the noose around my neck with graduation approaching next year. I need to make money off writing or I'll get stuck in an office, expanding my butt doing technical writing. I just want to curl up and not deal with that thought, since actively seeking agents (the key to being published) has thus far gotten me nowhere. UGH! Anyway, random rant. Sigh

Disclaimer: Saya is mine! Nah, not really, no one is. Except for my boyfriend/fiancé whatever the proper title is nowadays. Mine.

Last Chapter: Shiroihana set about laying a manipulation trap for Sess. She will hide Rin's transformation from him to make sure he takes the alliance he's supposed to make with Shimo-kun seriously. Sess is sick with a fever. Saya tattled on Akisame, but the cousins made up. Masuyo playfully tried to pledge himself and young Riki into Princess Saya's service. Saya, however, doesn't understand it's a game. Rin and Shimo got home and Tsuki and Shiroihana stopped them, separating them and trying to keep them from seeing Sess. But…will she succeed?

* * *

**A Brief Reunion**

Bathwater had already been drawn and heated by the time Rin reached the bathhouse. Sesshomaru's mother accompanied her, silent and solid, a powerful presence. Rin dug through her memories, recalling the woman as she had first seen her as a child. She had been intimidated by her then, but Sesshomaru had been with her. Her memories of the meeting were sketchy, unclear. One moment she had been in awe and trepidation of the inuyoukai woman, the next she was lost in a dark, shadowed world. Kohaku had told her that she had died and Sesshomaru's mother resurrected her.

Now, aware that she might potentially owe her like to the inuyoukai woman at her side, she found herself caught between suspicion and comfort. If Sesshomaru's mother could be trusted than she had saved Sesshomaru's life while Shimofuri had been away. Yet the way that Tsukiyume and Sesshomaru's mother had worked to waylay her and Shimofuri so soon…

Sesshomaru's mother caught Rin's stare and turned her head as they walked. Her lips curved in a smile that Rin recognized as belonging to Sesshomaru. In the rare instances that she'd seen his lips curve in such an expression, it had been identical. (A/N: My boyfriend has his mother's smile too. A charming one, but it freaks me out because his mother SCARES me.)

"We have met before," Sesshomaru's mother murmured. "Of course it was not formally." She stopped and motioned with one hand to an open doorway where a maid knelt. Steam flowed from the room and perfume-scents assaulted Rin's nose, making her cringe for a moment as she adjusted. "Before you go in," she said, "let me introduce myself. I am Lady Shiroihana."

Rin bowed slightly. Her short, glossy black hair fell over her shoulders. Rin realized, with astonishment, that it was longer than it had been the day before. "I am Lady Rin," she introduced herself, matching Shiroihana's formality.

They entered the bath and maids surrounded Rin, stripping off the old, dirtied robe that she had run from the north in. Self-consciously, all-too aware that Shiroihana was in the room with her, Rin tried to hide herself, pressing one arm into her breasts, as the human women ushered her into a large porcelain tub filled with steaming water. Even after the colored brown-pink bubbles of soap covered her nakedness, Rin felt antsy and uncomfortable. Shiroihana said nothing but Rin felt her eyes nonetheless.

Rin called an end to the bath when a whole second wave of oils and perfumes came out, sickening her. The scents had been comforting and pleasant as a human, but with her changed senses and body, Rin found no pleasure in them. The maids helped her out and brought towels. They rubbed down her skin quickly, tucked away her wet hair, and then brought out a thin bathrobe. As they tied it, covering her body, Rin felt relief. She risked peeking over her shoulder at where Shiroihana stood near the door. The inuyoukai woman had closed her eyes and lowered her head, as if trying to fall asleep while standing. The only sign of her wakefulness lied in the slow petting motion her hands made of the white fluff at her shoulders.

Somehow this embarrassed Rin more. Her face burned and she hurried with the maids clamoring around her into an adjoining dressing room, filled with mirrors. Shiroihana didn't follow, mercifully. The maids swept in with white button socks for her feet, pins and combs for her hair, an under robe, and a full summer kimono in blue and green. In fact they came with several different ensemble choices. The eldest maid chattered about the robes once belonging to Lady Taikokajin. Rin, too nervous to listen or enjoy the information, picked her robes without thinking and ordered the maids to be swift.

As the maids pulled her obi around her in long loops and bickered with one another over what style they should tie it in, Shiroihana stepped in from the bath. Rin looked once at her mate's mother and then stared into the mirrors, blanking her expression, trying to hide her unease.

"Do not tie it elaborately," Shiroihana ordered. "And her hair must be put up."

The elderly maid tried to suggest otherwise. "But my lady, she is unmarried. And the long hair would be so much more attractive—she doesn't have much of it, but it will frame her face…"

"It will be put up, and the obi must be simple," Shiroihana snapped. She jabbed one clawed finger at a different, younger maid. "You, go and fetch the makeup."

Rin held her tongue, waiting. Her hands clenched up, the claws bit into her palms. The pain helped distract her and she held onto it, using it to clear out her mind.

The maids continued their work. The obi was tied simply as Shiroihana demanded. Rin's hair was pinned up, high and tight on her skull. When the maids tried to place decorative combs into it, Shiroihana barked at them. "It must be simple."

When the younger maid returned carrying a small wooden chest, a makeup box, Shiroihana said, "Cover up her marks."

All of the human women looked up with shock. The eldest spoke for all of them, "What do you mean, my lady?"

Shiroihana stepped forward and knelt impatiently at Rin's side. She snatched the younger woman's arm, forcing Rin to look at her. Rin met her eye with a glare; her lips were pinched tightly together with growing rage. Shiroihana reacted to Rin's expression by smiling widely. "Lady Rin, I apologize for all of this mess. You are undeserving of it, but considering these circumstances, I have no other alternative."

Rin pulled her arm from Shiroihana's. "What are you saying?" she demanded.

Without bothering to look at them, Shiroihana commanded the maids, "Leave us. You're all through here." As they shuffled out, Shiroihana pulled the makeup box close to her and opened the latches keeping it shut. She picked through the pigments inside it, holding them up near Rin's face until she'd found a suitable match. Removing the cap, she dabbed her fingertips into the makeup.

Unable to sit idly by any longer, Rin reached out, striking with her new, fast reflexes, snatching Shiroihana's wrist, holding her at bay. "What are you doing?"

"For the time being, if you are going to see my son you must appear human. He will not be able to smell the difference, only see it. Therefore, this," she explained, lifting her clawed fingertips up, showing the smeared skin-toned makeup. "The marks on your cheeks, on your hands, they must be hidden."

Rin's hand stayed wrapped around Shiroihana's wrist, restraining her though Sesshomaru's mother made no effort to fight her. "Why?" she asked, frowning.

"Sesshomaru will recover best if he receives no massive shocks during this time. You are aware that he is mortal at this time?" Shiroihana asked, smoothly.

Rin pursed her lips, troubled at the thought and filled with anxiousness at the thought of her once-powerful mate reduced to mortality, to such vulnerability…

"He has been injured and suffers a fever as a result. A physician is with him at this time, and when I last saw him he was sleeping well, but I fear for his health. If he is to recover it must be done in peace and quiet. I will allow you to see him, but I must ask that you hide your changed body from him for now."

Rin searched Shiroihana's face, and although doubt continued to linger within her, she couldn't think of any other reason that made sense. Why shouldn't she trust Shiroihana? Slowly, drawing a deep breath, Rin released Shiroihana's hand and nodded. "I agree—but what about Lord Shimofuri, and Lady Ginrei?"

"I have set the hanyou to deal with them." She paused for a moment and her brow furrowed, troubled. "I have not yet mentioned this to the little youkai." When she saw Rin's confusion at the lack of a name, Shiroihana added, "My son's impish retainer."

"Jaken," Rin realized.

"Yes, him. I will have him leave the room before you arrive." Shiroihana gently laid her fingertips on Rin's cheek. Rin flinched at the coolness of the makeup, but then steadied herself, adjusting as Shiroihana smoothed the pigment over her skin. "It is a shame that I must do this," Shiroihana relented.

"What do you mean?" Rin asked, tentatively.

"You are a beautiful creature, in whatever form you take, Lady Rin."

Rin fought to control her reaction to Shiroihana's flattery, and failed anyway. Her cheeks burned momentarily and she swallowed hard with nervousness. The flattery was meant to ease her, but Rin felt nothing but discomfort. Though when she risked a glance at Shiroihana she found that the inuyoukai woman entranced by her work, barely touching Rin's skin. She treated the work with reverence, as if one scratch, one mistake would be a sacrilege.

As she turned her gaze away, Rin caught sight of her ears in the reflection of the mirrors spread out in the dressing room around her. Her lips parted with alarm. "Lady Shiroihana," she said, "I can't hide my ears."

Shiroihana didn't pause in her work. "My son is ill. He will not notice them. His human eyes will be more attuned to color." She didn't explain how she knew this, but her observations came from when Sesshomaru had reacted to her presence during his fever, the way he had touched her, grabbing her kimono in his hungry, needy fists. The raspy sound that had emerged from his throat, transformed into a human noise, but still for a mother it was unmistakable. The cry her baby son had used when he was looking to suckle, or in need of a nap, or frightened. Rin's disguise would be more than adequate to fool the mortal, sickly Sesshomaru.

Rin accepted the answer, seeing all-too well the wisdom of it. In her illnesses while she'd been human deliriousness often overtook her, clouding her mind. Now it laid over Sesshomaru…

* * *

Shiroihana sent Rin to reunite with Ginrei, Tsukiyume, Hanone, and Shimofuri briefly while she revisited her son. Sesshomaru slept on, though in the silence when Jaken wasn't flapping his lips, she was sure she could hear his heartbeat picking up. He would waken for a time, needing food and water and a chance to relieve himself. Shiroihana excused Jaken after hearing that he hadn't yet had a chance to tell Sesshomaru the plan for remaking and reforming the clan.

Shimofuri escorted Rin up to her mate's room and let her in, though he did not enter with her by Shiroihana's command. Shiroihana wasn't sure how much she could trust Tsukiyume. Had Tsukiyume divulged everything to her older brother? She hoped not, it would likely insult Shimofuri. He might resist marrying Ginrei out of principle because of an insult like that. As Rin entered the room and rushed forward to where Sesshomaru lied motionless, doused in his own sweat, Shiroihana felt distinctly frustrated and uncomfortable.

_This deception_, she thought,_ is quite challenging._ There were so many loose ends. Shimofuri and Tsukiyume had to be controlled. Jaken too. Ginrei was a hapless victim, and Hanone unknowing completely. Could she do it? It only needed to last for a day, or even another few hours. Just long enough for Sesshomaru to feel helplessness and loss. Then he could regain his inuyoukai status and see right through Shiroihana's ruse. He would see Rin and know he had lost his first wife, only to gain the one he had been waiting for all along.

She averted her eyes as the couple reunited in their crippled, awkward, and somehow touching way.

* * *

A touch fell on Sesshomaru's shoulder, gripping it and forcing him awake. His eyes popped open, wide with instinctual fear. He pushed the hand away and stared up at the face and body that swam above him in his sight. For a few moments he was not himself, not human or inuyoukai, just a living creature in fear for its existence. Then, abruptly, his breathing slowed and he blinked, recalling himself and regaining control.

His scentless nose handicapped him. (A/N: our language is handicapped here too. To lose one's sense of smell? What is that called? We have terms for blind, deaf, and mute. But you can tell by language what symbolically means less to us because we don't have a name for losses like taste or smell. It happens, but we don't give it a name.) He worked his eyes, trying to see through the fuzziness of the recent sleep and the effect of his fever. The shape at his side was small and diminutive, but too large to be Jaken or Hanone. He spotted black hair on its head, but dismissed the chance that it was Shimofuri by the way it was dressed elaborately in green with a yellow obi and under robe. Was it Tsukiyume?

His lips moved, trying to give voice to this question, but the shape above him came closer, wrapping her arms awkwardly over him, pulling him closer. Sesshomaru faintly resisted at first, but gave in to her touch when he felt both the strength and tenderness. He tried t inhale in vain to sniff out her scent. She wore perfumes and oils, pleasant and sweet, but there was no underlying scent to tell him her identity.

Finally she spoke in a teary, quiet voice, near his ear. "Lord Sesshomaru."

Her voice made him gasp, realizing at last who she was. "Rin?" The name emerged raspy, barely understandable.

She nodded against him, the softness of her cheek brushing his bare chest. "Lord Sesshomaru," she cried and she touched his face. Her nails slid over his cheeks and onto his chin, making the tiny stubble scratch. _Stubble,_ Sesshomaru's mind twisted with the agony of remembrance. _I'm human._

"How did this happen?" Rin asked, breathing the question above him.

He didn't know. It seemed that he had been ill for an eternity. Since coming to the Nanka to interrogate Tsukiyume weeks, years, or only days ago, Sesshomaru felt as if he had dreamt his other life into existence. He tried to shake his head and rasped, "I don't know."

Rin's hands continued to move over his face, and the feeling of the prickling stubble, just starting to grow on his chin and the edges of his cheeks, made her cry out with alarm. "Everything has changed…!" she began to sob.

In spite of her tears, which troubled him less than they would have if he had been clear-minded and able to smell them, Sesshomaru found hope stir in him for the first time. Rin had returned to him, alive and well. As the heat of Rin's breath mounted and the moisture of her tears rolled over his chest, Sesshomaru closed his eyes, suddenly fighting the swarm of his own emotion. He lifted his weak, human arms and wrapped them around Rin's shoulders.

Awkwardly, Rin laid down, stretching out her legs. She was halfway resting on him as she sniffled and cried, and halfway lying next to him. She worked to slow her breathing and sobbing, listening for his heartbeat. It came to her ears sharper than she recalled having heard it before, and faster as well.

"Saya…?" Sesshomaru asked.

The question brought on Rin's tears all over again. She choked out, "I don't know!"

Sesshomaru's body tensed below her, starting to quiver. Rin raised her head in alarm, glancing into his face. "Lord Sesshomaru…?"

"It's time to go," Shiroihana called from near the door. "He has relapsed into fever. I'll send for the doctor and see to it that he is treated."

"No," Rin sat up, swiping at her tears and tensing immediately. "I want to stay here with him."

Shiroihana's answer was fast and stiff. "That is not possible, Rin."

"I'm staying here," Rin told her.

Beneath her Sesshomaru had managed to stir again, pulling out of the shivering fit. His hands pulled on Rin's long kimono sleeves and then on the bare skin of her arm beneath. "Rin…"

She turned away from Shiroihana and, shaking herself, touched his face, staring into his brown eyes, once the same shade she had possessed. Now her eyes had lightened into a dark blue like water reflecting the sky. She took Sesshomaru's hand, holding it tightly to offer reassurance.

"You must come with me—_now…"_Shiroihana yelled, losing her temper. Something in her words sounded not just impatient, but _desperate. _

Rin ignored her, focusing all of her attention to Sesshomaru. "I'm staying here," she said, as much Shiroihana and herself as to Sesshomaru.

Sesshomaru was watching her through his narrowed eyes, concentrating hard. His brow furrowed, glistening with the remnants of sweat. "Your face…"

"What?"

Sesshomaru moved his shaky, blunt fingertips to her cheeks and touched below her eye. He brushed at her skin, searching.

The sound of robes rustling made Rin look up with surprise as Shiroihana descended on her and pulled her to her feet forcefully, hefting her up by one arm. Before Rin could fight back she found herself almost nose-to-nose with Shiroihana. Sesshomaru's mother glared through her golden eyes, so narrow that they appeared like slits where an archer might peek through a wall to take aim and let loose an arrow.

"_When I give an order you must obey!"_ she hissed in a whisper.

Although startled, Rin resisted, pushing Shiroihana away. The older inuyoukai woman released Rin's arm without a struggle, but she held tightly to her hand, tugging her toward the door. Rin dragged her feet and grit her teeth as she tried to free herself.

"Rin!" Sesshomaru cried out behind them. He moved feebly, trying to sit upright, trying to see what had happened. The sight of his mother's sky-blue kimono, the flash of bright white fluff. Anger roiled inside him like tangled snakes, but Sesshomaru didn't have the strength in his body to shout or pursue either woman. He laid back onto his mat and clenched his fist in frustration, yet even that motion was weak.

* * *

Outside the room, Rin at last freed herself from Shiroihana. When she turned to open the door again and hurry back inside to be with Sesshomaru, Shiroihana stood firmly in her way. Rin's jaw clenched and a pressure built in her chest, the foreign but comforting desire to rip into Shiroihana's flesh emerged, but Rin stifled it. She did not, however, manage to silence the frustrated growl that escaped her throat.

At the unexpected sound, at the deep, frightening rumble that she had heard so often from Sesshomaru, Rin covered her mouth with one hand. Her embarrassment distracted her from her quest to reenter the room for a time.

Shiroihana chuckled. Real amusement glinted in her golden eyes. "You are like a pup," she observed.

This made Rin bristle. "Get out of my way," she warned, removing her hand from her mouth.

"Do you recall our arrangement, Lady Rin? You must hide what you have become for now. He must recover first."

"I didn't say anything about it," Rin told her, scowling.

"You didn't need to." Shiroihana reached out slowly, gently, toward Rin's face. Rin flinched away a second too late and Shiroihana's claws glanced over her skin. When the older inuyoukai lifted them up, Rin saw clearly just why Shiroihana had been desperate to get her out of the room. The makeup was coming off, dampened by her crying.

"His eyes are better than I had thought," Shiroihana murmured. "I do apologize for treating you so roughly." Shiroihana sighed and pulled absently on her fluff.

Alarmed, but still suspicious, Rin rubbed at her own cheeks and stared at her fingertips. They were smudged brown. "If he already knows," she said, "why can't I stay with him? Lord Sesshomaru mustn't be alone…"

"Excitement at this time is ill-advised," Shiroihana said, "but I will have that imp with him." She shrugged her shoulders, feeling the weight of her robes. "Come now, Lady Rin. We must find the imp and fetch the physician."

Just as Rin turned to move down the hallway in the direction that Shiroihana pointed out, a shout came down the hallway. Rin and Shiroihana paused where they were, listening for a time. Down the long, straight passageway a maid was sprinting toward them.

Behind Rin, Shiroihana made a small sound like a groan and said, "I believe things are about to become interesting."

The maid fell to her hands and knees before them in a deep bow. "Please forgive this lowly one, but I come with grave news!"

"Sit up," Rin ordered, trying to conceal her surprise and worry.

The maid sat up though she didn't lift her face completely to them. She was a homely girl with a beaklike nose, but her voice was pleasant and she managed to speak without stuttering in spite of her long run to reach them. "Lord Shimofuri sent me to tell you that the kitsune Aojiroi Jinsoku has returned from searching for your daughter. He reports that a certain Inuyasha will not relinquish custody of your daughter." There was a slight pause and then the maid added, "And a different kitsune has come with news that a large army has amassed in the north. They are advancing toward the Nanka as we speak."

Shiroihana asked, "When will they be here?"

"Forgive me," the maid answered. "I do not know."

Shiroihana sniffed and then gave a small laugh. "Tomorrow I suspect. They are running out of time."

Rin wrestled with the need to stay close to Sesshomaru and the deep, instinctual drive to protect her daughter. Her hands sweated, her palms itched. _Saya…_

"You are dismissed," Shiroihana told the maid.

As the maid began hurrying away, scurrying like a frightened mouse, Rin felt her thoughts skitter with the human woman, flowing out of the Nanka and all of the Middle Lands, flying to the east coast, to the estate that had sheltered her while she carried Saya inside her womb. She could already see the golden glow of Inuyasha's eyes and those of her daughter. She had seen Inuyasha dealing with young children before and the hanyou was remarkably patient and gentle. But how would he treat the child of his estranged brother?

Her heart picked up, hammering. She started walking without thinking, propelled by the thought of her child alone…

"Where are you going?" Shiroihana called out from behind.

"Saya," Rin yelled back. "I have to get Saya."

* * *

For a moment, watching Rin's retreat, Shiroihana opened her mouth to protest—but then she paused. Her lips came together again, smashing tightly down as she clenched her jaw. Her shoulders sagged slightly.

With Rin gone Shiroihana's manipulation might be easier. Sesshomaru was going to recover. He was going to give up his wife. There would be a battle…It would be easier to hide the change if Rin weren't around. In fact if Sesshomaru regained his sense of smell before Shiroihana had successfully convinced him to give up Ginrei it would be impossible. The slightest whiff of Rin's changed scent would reveal the truth.

Yes, this would work just fine.

With a small smile, Shiroihana set out searching for the physician and the small youkai, Jaken. After she had sent them to tend Sesshomaru she would join Shimofuri, Ginrei, and Tsukiyume and begin the unfortunate process of dissolving her son's marriage and separating Ginrei and Hanone from each other…

* * *

In the evening, as the sun began to sink and meld into the horizon, and the heat dissipated, Saya joined Inuyasha where he was still sitting in the pavilion, watching as Miroku, Kohimu, Tisoki, and Koinu sparred together. Inuyasha watched her approach the entire time, though his attention flicked back to the fighters every so often to check the form and technique of one of them.

When Saya reached the small wooden stairs in front of the pavilion, Inuyasha barked at Tisoki and Miroku, the current fighters. "Stop! Pause!"

Miroku relaxed at once, displaying his amazing, but (at least in his youth) self-control. The monk took a few steps back from his son and slowed his breathing, turning his head to watch as Saya clumsily made her way up the wooden stairs. His sparring partner, his second-born son Tisoki, collapsed onto his knees, panting outright. Sweat dribbled over both, on their necks, foreheads, and it even soaked into their robes. Miroku remained garbed in a thin under robe for his chest, but his full purple-black robes covered his legs. Tisoki, meanwhile, had shed his shirt completely. He wore peasant-like leggings over his legs. As he doubled over, panting in the pause, sweat glistened slickly over his back.

Koinu, sitting on the opposite side of the pavilion from his father, sat upright and perked his ears forward when he noticed Saya. Nervously, he glanced to his father, waiting for something.

Saya rushed forward and fell into a bow in front of Inuyasha. "This one is most sorry for interrupting!"

"Feh," Inuyasha grunted. "It's fine, kid. Tisoki was about to die anyway. What are you doing here?"

Saya sat up slightly. She stared intently at her uncle's face, considering him. He was a lot like her. He shared the same scent—the _hanyou_ scent. He had white hair as she did, and golden eyes too. To outside eyes, except for his lack of facial markings, Inuyasha could have been her father. If Inuyasha shared some of the same features and titles as she did—_hanyou_ for instance—surely he would know about _princess_ too.

"Are you a princess?" she asked.

Tisoki, already doubled over from exertion, fell down as he started to laugh. He coughed and choked on the air that whistled in and out of his mouth. "…princess! Inuyasha…princess!" he whooped with laughter.

Miroku, Kohimu, and even Koinu covered their mouths and averted their eyes as Inuyasha glared past Saya at them, trying to keep them quiet and to silence Tisoki outright. "Shut the hell up!"

"…princess!" Tisoki hollered, dissolving into giggles.

Saya watched their reaction with mounting consternation and upset. She lowered her gaze, hiding her face. Inuyasha didn't miss her reaction. Grumbling, he shouted a final time to Tisoki, saying, "Shut up kid! Miroku—kick your son in the ass. Spar! Fight!"

Tisoki shook his head, sobering swiftly. "Wait!"

But Miroku had already advanced on him, taking up an aggressive stance and lifting up his fighting pole. Tisoki yelped as the battle recommenced. Their poles clanged together violently, drawing even the embarrassed Saya's attention.

In a low voice, as the clacking poles continued only feet away, Inuyasha told his niece, "I'm _not_ a princess. You have to be an unmarried girl to be a princess."

"Oh," Saya sighed dejectedly. "I'm not a princess?"

"Uhh…" Inuyasha's ears fell flat and his brow furrowed as he ran that question through his thick skull. His eyes drifted to Miroku and Tisoki and narrowed as he watched their movements, judging them. He had never been a fan of organized fighting, but his vision was keener than the others, with the possible exception of Saya and Koinu. It was his job to watch the form and technique, and also to determine who needed more training, toning, or practice—and who was exhausted.

At last he blinked, refocusing on Saya. He shrugged. "I guess you could be…" but what he thought underneath it was: _If you're an orphan you're just a mongrel like I was…_

Saya pressed onward, driven anew by curiosity and need. "What do princesses do, Uncle?"

Again the hanyou shrugged, losing patience with the topic and distracted by the fighting going on in the background as Tisoki's breathing came in rougher and louder gasps. His ears laid flat atop his head. "I don't know. They order people around, I guess. Make rules. Look pretty, marry rich lords and—Tisoki!" he broke off into a shout at the fighters. "You're done! Sit down."

Obediently, panting like a dog and slick with sweat, Tisoki stumbled away from Miroku and fell onto his backsides beside Koinu. Miroku caught his breath for a moment in the pause, then said, "I think I should retire too."

Inuyasha was already eyeing up the next victims for the pre-dinner brawl. "Kasai!" he shouted, making everyone, including Saya, twist and crane their heads to the veranda where Kasai had just emerged.

Kasai understood his meaning immediately and raced for the pavilion, slapping her hands on her thighs, wiping away the slime and grease from preparing the fish. "You want me to fight?" she asked as she ascended the stairs.

"Yeah—you and Kohimu. Hand-to-hand."

Kohimu objected swiftly, "I'll hurt her, Inuyasha."

Miroku nodded in agreement, wiping at the sweat on his brow.

"I can handle it," Kasai snapped, frowning. She pulled on her robe, discarding the outer one and pulling impatiently at her socks.

Kohimu returned her frown and snarled, "You haven't even tied your hair back, Little Sister."

She blustered, "I don't need to!"

"I'll fight her," Koinu interrupted.

"No—you'll just let her win," Inuyasha said, scowling at his son.

"Is dinner ready?" Tisoki asked, still breathing hard, distracted from the fight by his body's needs.

Kasai sighed, "It's almost ready, yeah. That's why Aunt Kagome sent me out here."

"We should go eat then," Kohimu suggested.

"You're just scared I'll beat you," Kasai taunted him.

Kohimu's face clenched up with anger but he stifled the reaction and looked away, refusing to dignify her words with a response.

Saya watched their bickering with a mixture of curiosity and alarm, unable to fathom the undercurrents of the massive family. Mildly disturbed at it, she turned and tugged once more on Inuyasha's red haori sleeves. "Uncle! What do princesses do the most?"

Inuyasha's eyes darted between the fighting and his niece, frustrated that he couldn't get Saya to stop asking him stupid questions and couldn't get Miroku's children to stop _being_ stupid. He gave her a fast, unthinking answer, "They get kidnapped."

Saya blinked at his words, even more confused. Her little expression warped, creasing with a deep frown. _Kidnapped…?_

"All of you," Inuyasha bellowed finally, "just shut the hell up! We're going inside to eat! No one is fighting! Now let's get going!"

Kasai stammered, trying to alter his decision, "But I—"

"Move it!"

Miroku's sons and Kasai, with Koinu walking beside her, filed off the pavilion. Inuyasha moved after them, ushering Saya in front of him. Miroku was last, falling into step with the two hanyou, uncle and niece together.

The monk sighed regretfully. "I really wish they wouldn't fight that way," he muttered.

"Feh," Inuyasha growled. "It's fucking unnatural."

Miroku smirked, staring at Inuyasha directly now, letting the hanyou see his amusement.

"What?" Inuyasha demanded.

"Oh," Miroku spoke with a mocking, singsong tone that made Inuyasha bristle visibly. "Nothing, but perhaps you should recall…" he stopped, suddenly aware of what he was saying. He stammered, changing what he'd been saying completely. "…recall that your children fight often too."

"Not like those two." The hanyou gestured ahead to Kasai and Kohimu.

Miroku agreed, glad that Inuyasha hadn't picked up on what he'd _really_ wanted to say: _Perhaps you should recall your own brother._ He watched Saya, toddling ahead of them, deep in thought, and breathed a small sigh of relief. Whatever had happened in the Western Lands or the Middle Lands, Shippo was surely uncovering it.

Time would tell.

* * *

A/N: Remember to drop me some encouragement if you liked it! I'm bummed and frustrated right now. This chick in my **Senior Seminar** class submitted this horrible, unfinished piece of writing for our class small group workshops. Horrible! Dialogue all in the same paragraph chunked together, unclear order of events, contradicting information, BAD tenses up the wazoo...she's a SENIOR in ENGLISH and she can't write! I mean I looked at it and thought, "this is like a freshman..." there are freshman in college that would do better! _So if this girl can get through college with a degree in English and so little skill...WHY WON'T ANY PUBLISHERS OR AGENTS TAKE ME??_ Ugh. Sorry, I'm getting really fed up with it all :(


	27. Deliberation

A/N: This I thought was a little long, but it was shorter than the update for _Innocence_ so okay whatever. I was having a great deal of trouble writing fiction recently. Submitting to a whole bunch of agents via email and being rejected over and over again really wore me down. It's taken a while to be able to look at fiction or think about it without getting down on myself like, "Why are you wasting your time?" I really, really, really, really, REALLY appreciate everyone's encouragement last update. I really did and do. I intend to go into my inbox and answer a great deal of them from like last month whenever I last updated and tell everyone thank you. It really does brighten my outlook to have a captive audience (haha captive, I'm chaining you to the story, le sigh) that appreciates my work and tells me to keep going. It's really what makes it all worthwhile and possible.

As for this chapter it is a lot of talking, not much action. It all takes place in the Nanka, so no Saya or IY in this one.

Dislcaimer: I do not own them. I only own me.

Last Chapter: Shiroihana continued her manipulation, allowing Sess and Rin to see each other, but hiding Rin's transformation from him. He's still sick but that will soon change. Shiroihana is finding the task difficult, and already her cover was almost blown when the makeup she used on Rin to hide the markings on her face started to smear with her tears. Sess may already suspect. After Rin saw him for a little while a maid came and told them that an army was approaching out of the North (lead by Kanseninu, a dude we saw back during the chapter on Shimo's wedding) and Aojiroi came back, though the maid didn't say his name, to report that IY would not let Saya go. When Rin heard this she took off for IY's to get Saya herself.

**Deliberation**

"The army from the north has assembled too quickly with too many warriors," Shimofuri snarled bitterly. "I will barely be able to defend the Nanka—the rest of the Middle Lands might as well be theirs already."

Shimofuri and Shiroihana were sitting at an empty table. Tsukiyume sat beside her brother, silently backing him by listening with her keen ears to the conversation and sneaking quick glances at Shiroihana and Jaken who sat across the table from her, representing Sesshomaru for the time being. Shiroihana had begun the discussion late, complaining that Jaken was too close to her so now the toad sat so far from her that a whole other person could fit between them. It was as if Shiroihana had left a spot empty for her missing son, the MIA Rin, and Ginrei who was watching over Sesshomaru.

Tsukiyume spent most of her time staring at the long curtain of silky, blue-black hair that ran down her older brother's back. She struggled with her emotions, fidgeting uncomfortably whenever Shiroihana looked at her. Was it worry that creased Shiroihana's brow? Did she wonder whether Tsukiyume had betrayed her confidence and told Shimofuri about her plans? Tsukiyume was nauseous with the knowledge that she _hadn't_ told her brother. _I've betrayed Brother…_

They had spent a great deal of their time with tense explanations. Shiroihana said that she had decided to keep Shimofuri away from Sesshomaru because her son was weak with fever, it just wouldn't do to disturb his sleep. Tsukiyume fought to keep herself from glaring at those word,s knowing that they were mostly lies, excuses. The truth was Shiroihana wouldn't let Shimofuri tell Sesshomaru what had happened to Rin. The rest of their conversation and argument had been about the armies coming from the north, of how to defeat an enemy that was backed by a _goddess._ Shiroihana spoke in riddles, making almost no sense and frustrating Shimofuri and Jaken to no end. As time passed the maids and servants retired to sleep, leaving the castle under the care of a skeleton crew as the night burned on.

"I cannot fight this battle with the armies and rulers of the Middle Lands dead and scattered. I understand that Lady Soeki has died while I was away and my uncle has passed on as well." Shimofuri sighed, his shoulders sagging with real emotion, feeling the invisible weight pressing on his shoulders. "I am the only leader in all of the Middle Lands now. Sesshomaru is helpless—"

Jaken squawked, protesting immediately. "You insolent whelp! _Lord Sesshomaru_ has never been helpless!"

Shimofuri's blue eyes slid briefly to the imp and then he snorted, unimpressed by Jaken's indignant, righteous anger. He continued addressing Shiroihana, who hadn't bothered defending her son. "Unless you are able to rally the armies in the Western Lands I see little hope, my lady."

A sly smile spread across Shiroihana's face. "How amusing that Lord Shimofuri should believe I have power equal to my son. Quite refreshing," she bit out the words, slowly, enjoying each one. Her golden eyes squinted with pleasure. "Of course I will help Lord Shimofuri in every way that I possibly can."

_Flattery,_ Tsukiyume thought, making a face of disgust. Shiroihana never used proper titles, yet now suddenly she was using every title to lift Shimofuri high, to put him at ease. When she caught Jaken gazing at her, examining her expression a little too closely, she blanked it and stared into her lap demurely.

"You're saying you can't control the armies of the West?" Shimofuri asked, searching for a simpler answer.

"It is within my power to control a portion of that army, yes. It will take time to gather them, however, and that is something I suspect we do not have, Lord Shimofuri." She stopped, closing her eyes and sighing tiredly. "But war is so fatiguing. There is a better solution. We can kill the goddess and be rid of this entire war with diplomacy."

"Diplomacy?" Shimofuri asked, scowling.

"You can't _kill_ a goddess!" Jaken shouted.

"Little youkai, you are naïve and your breath is foul. Please, refrain from speaking any further."

Jaken huffed and muttered beneath his breath, glaring at Shiroihana.

Shimofuri twisted around to stare at his sister. Tsukiyume lifted her gaze to meet his blankly and found that her brother was searching her face, looking for the answer to something. She could give him nothing. She looked back down into her lap and sighed, closing her eyes. At last Shimofuri focused back on Shiroihana and, warily, said, "What would you propose, my lady?"

"Hmn," Shiroihana hummed, reaching up and petting the fur at her shoulders, a long established habit. "How good of Lord Shimofuri to ask. I possess the power to kill the goddess, or rather, to banish her to the underworld. Without her backing them Kanseninu will falter. His army has been swollen with unnatural spells and magic. The goddess uses spells to transform and enslave wild animals or to fashion warriors out of clay, stealing souls from other realms to give them life. When she has been destroyed his army will be roughly equal to your own. The Northern Lands are not powerful, and only a small part of it has risen up to take part in this war. Once Kanseninu is killed the fighting will stop. Of course Lord Shimofuri has also heard of Lady Yamome of the Northern Lands…?"

Shimofuri nodded. "I know she was Lord Arasoizuki's wife, the mother of his two sons. The survivor was called Boroya. Some time ago my uncle proposed an alliance between her and I, a marriage…"

"She didn't desire it and neither did Lord Shimofuri, of course." Here Shiroihana paused to smile slyly and Tsukiyume sneered down into her lap, knowing what Shiroihana was thinking: _How lucky that he didn't want to marry Yamome, it means he can marry Ginrei._ Shiroihana went on; completely unaware of the undercurrent of disgust from Tsukiyume and the way that Jaken had perked up, looking between the hanyou girl and the inuyoukai woman, wondering.

"What she did in fact desire was revenge. Quite improper of her! She had backed Kanseninu's war and connected him to the goddess, giving him the unnatural power he needed to swoop in here and take hold of the Middle Lands and the Western Lands if he could. Considering that she has played a large role in this war my suggestion would be that she should die for it but I believe she will respond to diplomacy."

"She did not respond before," Shimofuri pointed out.

Shiroihana leaned in over the table slightly, her eyes taking on a sharp, sadistic glint. "Mothers always respond to diplomacy if their children are involved."

Shimofuri blustered with shock, "Are you saying—"

"Of course. She has pushed us to this means."

"I will not—"

"Of course you won't, Lord Shimofuri. I would never suggest such a thing. As I said earlier, I intend to help you in every way I can. I will have the young heir escorted out of the Northern Lands. I will also deal with her myself. As far as she will be concerned, you will have nothing to do with it at all." Shiroihana's smile was filled with satisfaction.

"Where would he stay?" Shimofuri asked, aghast. "Not here!"

"It would make perfect sense for him to stay with you. After all, one day Boroya will inherit a province of the Middle Lands, will he not?"

Shimofuri shook his head, astounded and buried in confusion. "Yes, but…"

"At any rate," Shiroihana moved on, waving a hand dismissively at Shimofuri when he tried to interrupt her. "I have another proposal for you, Lord Shimofuri. I would like to form an alliance with you."

Shimofuri's sour, wary expression changed into a look of bafflement as his eyebrows lifted into his forehead. "An alliance?"

"Yes, to thank you for all that you have done for me by caring for my stubborn son."

Jaken harrumphed, unhappy with her informal, almost outright rudeness regarding Sesshomaru, but he said nothing and everyone ignored him.

There was a pause before Shimofuri cleared his throat, taking on a solemn, pensive expression and adopting a deeper, serious tone to his voice. "Go on, Lady Shiroihana. What would you propose?"

Shiroihana shifted, readjusting the white pelt at her shoulders and glancing quickly just once toward Tsukiyume. She began speaking in a slow, quiet voice. "I believe that my son owes you his life, a great debt that he will likely never be able to fully repay. To help meet this great debt, I propose that my son should give you his wife—Lady Ginrei."

Shimofuri stared at her without blinking, without moving a single muscle. Finally he said, "Of course Sesshomaru has no purpose for Lady Ginrei now that Lady Rin has miraculously transformed…"

Shiroihana blinked rapidly and her lips quirked in a hard frown, insulted and surprised. Tsukiyume lifted her eyes and smirked openly at the inuyoukai woman, relishing her older brother's intelligence, his quick wit. He had already seen through her.

Shiroihana had counted on Shimofuri reacting with surprise and gratitude, thinking only of his own lack of heirs. Of course there was some shame with a secondhand wife so to speak, but the inuyoukai had fewer fears and concerns about virginity and fidelity in their females and wives. Why should a husband like Shimofuri worry when he would be able to smell a deception if she became pregnant with another male's offspring? He would always know through his nose whether a mate had been faithful in the way it really mattered: her pups. Also, unlike human women who had few rights and were regarded almost strictly as property, some inuyoukai women could rule, like Shiroihana and Taikokajin. Ginrei, as the last representative of Nishiyori's clan, had a certain breeding prestige that made her appealing. Like Yamome, who had been told to remarry rather than kill herself out of a notion of honor, the inuyoukai placed value on their females. In this instance, as Shiroihana had suggested an alliance, it would've been entirely possible that Shiroihana suggest herself as the bride for Shimofuri, though Shimofuri would have rejected it because Shiroihana was unlikely to bear more pups at her age.

"It is true that my son will marry Rin," Shiroihana started, but at that moment Jaken spoke up, unable to control himself.

"_What?"_ He looked around at the hanyou girl and then the two inuyoukai, his eyes bulging out even more than usual. It wouldn't have surprised Tsukiyume if they had fallen out onto the table and rolled about like marbles. "Lady Rin? He can't—she isn't…"

Without looking at the flabbergasted imp, Shimofuri explained, "Lady Rin has been miraculously changed from human to inuyoukai. I found her in that changed state. Now I'm wondering why." He jabbed a clawed finger at Shiroihana in an openly rude gesture. "Did you have something to do with this?"

Shiroihana let out a frustrated growl and blurted, "No, I didn't." She touched the round pendent Meidou-seki at her neck. "As I told you before, I am often in contact with the dead. That was how I knew to come here before that inuyoukai girl could kill my son when _you_ left, Shimofuri."

"Then the dead had something to do with it?" Shimofuri asked.

Jaken mumbled to himself, shaking his head, "Someone must tell Lord Sesshomaru of this!"

Hearing him, Shiroihana lashed out, slapping the toad and knocking him across the room. Her sudden motion made Tsukiyume gasp and back against the far wall while Shimofuri got to his feet and reached for the short sword he kept at his waist. Jaken groaned from the floor some feet away, pushing himself upright slowly, tentatively, waiting for something to snap or pop with pain.

"Lady Shiroihana!" Shimofuri barked at her, his hand still over the hilt of his small sword.

She chewed for a moment on her lip, revealing the bright white sliver of a canine. "No one can tell my son of her change. I will not allow it. Is that understood?"

"You've gone mad," Shimofuri muttered.

"No," Shiroihana said, sighing. "I haven't." She closed her eyes and her shoulders sagged. "Lord Shimofuri, forgive me but you are young. You have not seen the world beyond these Island Nations, beyond this human _Japan._ I have. In the years since my husband died I left and traveled over the mainland in the far west. The world I have seen is changing and _humans_ rule it, not us. These islands are an oasis, a place untouched by the new order. Even so I have seen how we are changing here too. The humans rise up and kill us, or we fight and slaughter each other. It must stop. The dead, such as my husband, have called to me in recent days. I am one of the oldest, most powerful inuyoukai left. Before my time ends I must assure that our kind will live on after me. If I do not act I may live to see the end of our kind." She drew in a breath and opened her eyes. "So it is that I have come to you with a plan to rebuild the inuyoukai clan, to repopulate. We must reconnect with the lands in the north and the far south and reestablish the families."

As she had spoken, Shimofuri slowly sat back down, listening with fresh interest, though the wary glint lingered in his bluish eyes. He said, "So you want me to do what?"

Shiroihana stared into his eyes frankly, openly. "Marry Lady Ginrei. Have many pups. A son for the Nanka, and a son to take on the Nishiyori name and heritage. Let them make alliances with the North and South to bring in fresh blood. I will adopt Hanone and raise her as my female heir, for the Kosetsu province of the Western Lands. My son will marry Rin, but through myself and Lady Ginrei he will maintain an alliance with you. Boroya will be betrothed to Hanone, allying the Western Lands with the North and appeasing Yamome in due time."

"The dead have something to do with this?" Shimofuri asked, still incredulous.

"It is an arrangement that benefits all of the families. How do you suppose it was constructed otherwise?" Her eyes narrowed briefly, filled with dry humor. "I certainly did not come up with it—but enough chatter, my lord. Will you agree to sit through negotiations with my son and Lady Ginrei?"

Shimofuri sat back, tense. "I suspect I don't have much of a choice, do I?"

Shiroihana smiled triumphantly. "No, I'm afraid you don't, but it is a fine arrangement. You will have a good wife, Lord Shimofuri. You will be the father of your own clan."

Suddenly Shimofuri's lips parted slightly. _You will be the father of your own clan._ The words echoed in his mind, suspiciously close to ones he had heard before, but from a different source, one he would trust with his life. He looked back to his sister and saw her tense expression, the worry, the crease in her brow. He remembered her speaking to him before Sesshomaru had become mortal, when he had stormed out of the Nanka and out of Shimofuri's protection and Shimofuri had been willing to just let him go. Tsukiyume—or rather Kokoro through her—had said: _"Shimofuri-sama will rise out of this time the leader of his own clan. The balance of power will be restored."_

He faced Shiroihana and said, "I accept your proposal, my lady. I will negotiate with you and Lord Sesshomaru."

Jaken cried out, outraged. "You can't do this! Someone must tell…" he fell silent when Shiroihana glared at him, lifting one hand and flexing her claws for the imp to see.

Hearing Jaken, Shimofuri said, "Sesshomaru will never agree unless he knows. Jaken is right."

Shiroihana scowled. "If he knows he will never value the alliance, will he? My son can understand loss, but only when he is powerless. We must be cruel to him for his own good. Also, if he knows, it insults Lady Ginrei. He will treat her as if she has no worth."

Shimofuri's expression hardened, reacting to Shiroihana's words in a way that none of them could've expected. A dark, almost sinister gleam awoke in his handsome blue eyes. "I understand completely, my lady. Very well, I will not breathe a word about Rin's transformation."

Shiroihana smirked at him, wondering at the change. "How interesting," she muttered, petting the white fur at her shoulders. Then she barked at Tsukiyume, "Hanyou, watch the little youkai. Lord Shimofuri and I are going to visit Lady Ginrei and my son. There is no time to spare."

A scribe was sent for, woken out of a sound sleep and forced to come to wait outside of Sesshomaru's room. Shiroihana and Shimofuri were waiting for the old man with his crooked back, paper, little portable writing table, inks and brushes all at the ready. Shiroihana knocked, calling for Ginrei beyond. When Sesshomaru's wife answered the door her silvered eyes sprang open wide with alarm.

"Lord Shimofuri," she gasped, addressing him first, then, awkwardly, "Mother…"

"Don't call me that," Shiroihana muttered, pressing roughly past Ginrei.

Shimofuri gestured weakly for Ginrei to move ahead of him, but she was already bowing. They performed an awkward dance of respect and discomfiture. Ginrei thinking of how she had killed his possessed, dying wife to save her mortal husband, and Shimofuri already thinking of how she was to become his next wife, wondering how he could prove himself a worthy husband and mate, to show her that he would appreciate her as she deserved, as Sesshomaru never had. He would not fail her as he had failed Amagumori.

Finally the scribe and Shimofuri came into the room and viewed Sesshomaru clearly for the first time. The once proud ruler was sleeping deeply, unmoving in the dark room. A doctor sat at his bedside, blinking blearily and a small child, Hanone, was sleeping over his chest. Shiroihana moved about the room, barking orders. "Get the braziers burning in here so the scribe can see—Ginrei, set up the folding screen so Sesshomaru will be comfortable when we wake him."

The scribe left the room to get a servant to light the braziers, Ginrei set up the folding screen to hide Sesshomaru from prying eyes, to give him a shred of decency and privacy. As soon as it was up the doctor shooed Hanone out to be with her mother and shook Sesshomaru awake, offering him water and gathering pillows, helping him sit up.

Shiroihana appeared, looming next to her son and the doctor. She sent the human on his way and knelt to tend to her son directly. Sesshomaru managed to sit upright and focus on her, blinking until his eyes, still in a human shade of brown, began working. "Mother," he spoke in a hoarse rasp, "what is going on?"

Shiroihana reached out slowly, gently, and laid her palm over his face. His skin had developed a rough feeling, human hairs, stubble. But now as she smoothed her palm over his face the hairs gave way, shifting beneath her touch. She pulled her hand away and saw the tiny black dots covering her pale skin like flecks of pepper. He was shedding his human hair. The transformation was reversing itself.

Sesshomaru watched her with narrowed, confused eyes; waiting for her next move, trying to understand what she was doing or thinking. "Mother?"

Since his transformation, Sesshomaru had worn a dark haired wig to cover his baldness. Becoming mortal had made his body shed its hair. The long flowing white mane of before was completely gone. Shiroihana forced her clawed fingers hurriedly but carefully between the wig and her son's scalp. Sesshomaru pulled away but his movement was still weak with exhaustion and fatigue. When Shiroihana pulled out her hand and stared at the white flesh of the palm she again saw the flecks of black hair. His hair was inuyoukai again. In a few hours white hair would appear on his scalp, an inch at first, then six, then more. In a week the old man would have re-grown.

"How do you feel?" she asked him.

Sesshomaru pushed her away irritably. "What is happening?" he demanded.

"I've brought Lord Shimofuri to you, as well as a scribe. I believe it's time that you thanked him for protecting you during this time. I believe an alliance is in order, and I know just the show of gratitude you must make to help equal the debt you owe him." She smiled, an open, pleasant thing.

Sesshomaru frowned, a clearly human expression on him. "No."

Shiroihana's smile turned darker, harder. "You have no choice. It is the proper thing to do after all; you must thank your protector. He has demonstrated a desire to form a bond with you."

At last Sesshomaru's stubbornness gave way. His frown faded, replaced with a distant, blank stare. "What do you propose, Mother?"

"You must give him something that matters a great deal to you—Lady Ginrei."

Sesshomaru jerked his head, staring at his mother with widened eyes. His nostrils flared. "What?"

"Give Lord Shimofuri Lady Ginrei as a gift of good faith. Then you and he will be allied forever through her by young Hanone. Annul your marriage and give her up."

He gave one short shake of his head. "Ridiculous."

"But you owe Lord Shimofuri your life! Have you no honor?" Shiroihana demanded, quietly.

"We can betroth Hanone," Sesshomaru muttered, closing his eyes tiredly.

"Don't be silly," Shiroihana scolded. "She is barely more than a baby. It will be a hundred years before she is ready. Ginrei is of the proper age—"

"She's my wife!" he spluttered.

Shiroihana was silent for a moment and then she pressed closer to him, lowering her voice. "You are not yourself now, my son. You are not the lord of the Western Lands. You are a human. A lowly, worthless human. You cannot hold an inuyoukai woman like Ginrei as your wife. Your marriage to her at this time is already null and void. Whether you agree or not, Sesshomaru, I am going to give her to Shimofuri as payment. You can agree and be gracious, my son, or you can refuse and I will _take_ her from you." She paused and then added, "You will always have Lady Rin, and as a human, she is a fine specimen."

"My condition," Sesshomaru choked out, "is temporary."

"What if it isn't? What if I was incorrect earlier in telling you that it was?"

"It is temporary!"

"Does it feel temporary?" Shiroihana asked, taunting. She poked his cheek hard with one finger and Sesshomaru turned his face away, sneering and batting away her hand. His mother caught it, squeezing the fingers until the knuckles popped and Sesshomaru grimaced tightly with pain. A small flicker of fear passed over his features when she let go. For the first time since he had been a weak pup, he remembered what it was like to know that he was weaker than another, to fear even a small injury or pain…

Shiroihana pressed him: "What is your decision?"

Shimofuri tried not to overhear Shiroihana's hushed conversation with Sesshomaru, but his keen ears could hardly avoid the discussion. He found, to his own disgust, that his heart had picked up speed, noting a kind of anticipation. He had grasped Shiroihana's plan to manipulate Sesshomaru and had liked its darkness. Though he was entering into an alliance with the lord of the Western Lands, Shimofuri did have a healthy dislike for the other lord, leftover from Sesshomaru's continual use of Tsukiyume as a hostage.

That was part of his excitement, seeing Sesshomaru punished, the other was Ginrei herself. He had always thought her a beautiful, exquisite example of femininity. He had pitied her when she was the only survivor of the Nishiyori family. He had fought with her dog on dog very briefly, he had felt her teeth in his skin, seen her fangs glisten under the moonlight. Yes, he had always felt that Ginrei was wasted on Sesshomaru, who took her for granted, keeping her only as breeding stock…

He realized that he was staring at her, watching as she straightened her daughter's kimono, finger-combed her hair. He was glad she didn't appear to care what was being said behind the screen, unaware that her fate was about to change forever. When Ginrei glanced up and met his eye, Shimofuri tried to look away, but her silver eyes, a shade lighter and whiter than his own icy blue, locked him in place like a nail through wood. She was beautiful while Amagumori had only been pretty—and on top of that she wasn't his first cousin, but a distant, far removed relation only on his father's side.

"Lord Shimofuri?" she questioned suddenly nervous at his prolonged stare.

Her voice broke his trance and Shimofuri turned his head. He tried to clear his throat, to shrug off his staring with a sound, but it turned into an embarrassed cough and he felt his face flush hot. He emptied his mind, focusing on the patterns in the fiber of the wood in the boards that the floor was made of.

Then Shiroihana emerged from behind the screen and called the scribe. She positioned the group in a semi-circle, allowing herself, Shimofuri, and Ginrei to see one another with the scribe in the center. She began in cold, formal words, staring straight ahead at the opposite wall. As she spoke Sesshomaru stayed deathly silent behind his screened wall.

"The document is an official record detailing that the marriage of Lord Sesshomaru, of the Western Lands, with Lady Ginrei of the former Nishiyori clan, is annulled by technicality. The party at fault is Lord Sesshomaru."

Ginrei's mouth fell open in disbelief. "W-what?"

Shiroihana ignored her. "Due to the current extenuating circumstances, Lord Sesshomaru's condition has become such that he cannot maintain the marriage. Therefore he has agreed to release Lady Ginrei of all responsibilities and bindings that she had to him."

"His condition is temporary!" Ginrei screeched. In her lap Hanone whimpered, crying out in a babbling stream of panic inferred from her mother.

Shiroihana's mouth tightened for a moment as she waited for the scribe to catch up with her. Her gaze stayed focused on the far wall, unmoving. Shimofuri lowered his eyes and closed them, feeling shame spread through his body. He had thought of the plan with anticipation but now it seemed that separating Ginrei from Sesshomaru would be more difficult and emotional than he had expected. Had Ginrei developed an emotional attachment to her cold husband? Could Shimofuri replace Sesshomaru in her heart?

"Lady Ginrei's hold on the Western Lands is revoked with the ending of the marriage. Should Lord Sesshomaru die without further heir, however, let the record show that their daughter Hanone will become the next ruler of the Western Lands."

Ginrei shook her head wildly and clutched Hanone close to her chest. "No—stop this! Lord Sesshomaru! Can you hear me? Are you even awake? Stop this madness!"

The scribe's brush flicked over the smooth, white rice paper, marking down the record character by character, setting it in stone, making the moment real.

"With the marriage annulled, Lord Sesshomaru now wishes to forge an alliance with Lord Shimofuri, to support him in times of need for the younger lord's aid while Lord Sesshomaru was indisposed with the aforementioned extenuating circumstances. To cement this alliance, Lord Sesshomaru will provide Lord Shimofuri with Lady Ginrei as his betrothed."

Now Ginrei's gaze flew to Shimofuri and her mouth and jaw worked the air, astonished all over again.

Shiroihana continued when the scribe's writing lightened as he caught up, "In the broader interests of the entire inuyoukai clan, the marriage will provide heirs for two different lines. One being a line considered as descendants of the former Nishiyori family, the other continuing Lady Taikokajin and Lord Shimofuri's extant line. Preferably a son will be born to both lineages and named as such upon birth or his coming of age. Daughters may be inherited as the parents wish."

When Shimofuri didn't look up at Ginrei, the distraught mother turned toward Shiroihana with growing rage. "Whose idea was this really?" she snarled. "All those times you told me not to call you _mother._ What did I do to displease you? How dare you!" Ginrei swung between remorse for some action that must've set Shiroihana against her and rage that Shiroihana would conspire against her at all.

Now Shiroihana's gaze moved to Ginrei, stony and cold, but her mouth moved in a frown, revealing to Shimofuri regret, the complexity of the old mother's emotions. Just as fast as she had looked, Shiroihana refocused on the far wall and cleared her throat as she pressed onto the worst part of her sentence for Ginrei.

"To avoid burdening Lord Shimofuri and Lady Ginrei's future offspring, and to further the Shinkumaru line of the Kosetsu, let record state that the child Hanone will officially become the heir to the only living representative—Lady Shiroihana, the child's grandmother. Lady Shiroihana will adopt Hanone and raise her in the Kosetsu."

"No!" Ginrei's patience at last snapped, breaking. She held Hanone close to her and lunged on her knees for the scribe, snatching the brush from his hands. The man yelped with fear and released it, nearly colliding with Shimofuri in his desperate attempt to escape her.

A sound rose from Sesshomaru behind the screen, a half-growl, weak and raspy. "Mother—I did not…"

Shiroihana drowned him out, shouting, "This is what _must_ be done!"

Ginrei had started crying wildly, tears coursing down her cheeks. "Why have you taken _my daughter_ from me?" she screamed. She still held the scribe's brush in her hand, dripping bits of thick black ink onto the wood flooring.

Shiroihana lifted her chin up, pinching her lips into a hard, firm line. "This is a great honor, Lady Ginrei. You will be the mother of two, even three clans. Lord Shimofuri's line depends on you, as does the otherwise extinct Nishiyori family. Hanone will be my child and my heir in title only. You will mother her until a certain age, then she will come to stay with me. Your main concern must be providing pups for your new husband."

"You can't have my baby," Ginrei snarled, curling her lips, showing her fangs. Hanone clung to her, bawling and blubbering in fear at her mother's reaction, at the danger she perceived.

"Please Lady Shiroihana—I would not oppose caring for Hanone at all…" Shimofuri began, desperate to placate the panicked, enraged mother.

"In name the child is to become my heir," Shiroihana reiterated. "To preserve the Kosetsu's line of inheritance. Lady Ginrei will have every opportunity to visit Hanone and I will permit her to stay with Lady Ginrei for several years until she is more independent of her mother." As she spoke her face softened with sympathy, but Ginrei shook her head wildly, failing to see it.

"Perhaps a child Sesshomaru has with Lady Rin…" Shimofuri started and then stopped himself, aware that he was about to, or already had, given away Rin's transformation.

With a swift glare Shiroihana recovered his slip, saying, "They will all be hanyou…"

The scribe, seeing the tempers rising, and Ginrei's increasing madness, dashed for the door. Humans were known to die in inuyoukai disputes at such times and the scribe in particular was often a target of angry claws. But as the little crooked man threw open the screen door he stopped, backing away from it with his mouth agape.

A guard in full armor lurched into the door, panting as he dropped to his knees. "My lord," he addressed Shimofuri, "a kitsune has arrived and asks to see you sister. Lady Tsukiyume has identified him as friend. He comes with questions concerning Lord Sesshomaru's health and whereabouts."

Shimofuri cocked his head to one side, relieved at the distraction and perplexed at the guest. _Kitsune…?_

He turned to Shiroihana, avoiding Ginrei shamefully. "I must go to meet this visitor."

From behind the screen Sesshomaru spoke out, "Mother—I would speak with you…"

"Later," Shiroihana barked. To Shimofuri she said, "Bring that little youkai with you to represent my son."

As Shimofuri left, hardly sparing the time to excuse himself properly, Shiroihana was ordering the scribe back to his writing desk, to the paper dotted with splattered ink. Shimofuri heard her shouting to Ginrei, ordering the young woman to calm down. He breathed with unbelievable ease at having left the flurry inside that room.

In a few short minutes he reached the audience room that the guard led him to where he could smell the kitsune, Tsukiyume, and Jaken already there. The voice he heard was bright and young, that of a male boy. It was oddly familiar, as was the scent, but Shimofuri couldn't place it. Only when he stepped into the room and peered over the few feet between himself and his guest that the memory of the fox's fiery red hair, his bright green eyes leapt to the surface. This was the fox that had brought Tsukiyume back to him from Inuyasha's home.

Tsukiyume shuffled backward, giving Shimofuri room on the small platform where he, as the receiving lord, was meant to sit during an audience. Tsukiyume took her traditional place behind him, demure and quiet. As he sat, Shimofuri noted the way that the fox lifted his head slightly, peeking while he continued to bow. The sharp intelligence in the green orbs awakened a note of alarm inside Shimofuri as he realized that the kit's interest was _not_ in him or the imp Jaken sitting off to the right, but rather it was on Tsukiyume.

Disturbed, Shimofuri cleared his throat and said, "Fox, you may sit up."

The kit did as he was told. His red hair bounced around his head. Self-consciously the kit lifted one clawed hand and tucked the loose strands behind his pointed ears. "Lord Shimofuri?" he asked, sounding nervous. "I'm not sure if you remember me, sir, but my name is Shippo. I live with Inuyasha…"

"I remember you," Shimofuri told him, nodding. "You have news?"

"Uh," he stuttered uncertainly and glanced toward where Jaken sat, stewing in an invisible soup of indignation. "I think Jaken and Tsuk—_Lady Tsukiyume_," the kit's more familiar word choice had stopped partway through as he caught the tiniest narrowing of Shimofuri's eyes. "I think they already answered some of the questions I needed to know. A fox came to Inuyasha's home looking for a little girl named Saya—Sesshomaru's daughter. Tsukiyume told me that you really did send the fox to get her, Lord Shimofuri."

"Yes, I sent Aojiroi Jinsoku after her." He glanced to Jaken before saying, "Lord Sesshomaru has been with us, suffering an unusual illness."

"Illness?" Shippo repeated, frowning with disbelief. "The last time I checked inuyoukai didn't catch colds."

"This is an unnatural illness," Shimofuri muttered. "It is more of a spell really."

Jaken grunted loudly, unhappy with all of the hinting that the others were doing about Sesshomaru's weakness. "We are not at liberty to speak of Lord Sesshomaru's condition."

Shippo's green eyes flowed over all of them, taking them in, thinking. Would Jaken, ever-loyal Jaken, turn against Sesshomaru? Could he trust what he was hearing? Finally the kit nodded. "Inuyasha has been protecting Saya, so he turned the fox away because he couldn't believe that Lord Sesshomaru was sick."

Tsukiyume spoke up then, "The illness made him turn into a human, Shippo."

Jaken clucked and bristled like a bird. "How dare you!"

Shippo sat back as if Tsukiyume had struck him using the words, as if they were solid. "A human?" Suddenly a smile spread over his lips, pr rather an uncontrolled grin. "Is it permanent? Can I see him?" he broke off into giggles. "Inuyasha would _love _this!"

"Hush," Shimofuri snapped. He glared over his shoulder at Tsukiyume, silently telling her to be silent. "What did you come here to tell us?"

"Oh," suddenly Shippo was blushing. "I uh, mostly it was to see if the fox was telling the truth or not, if Sesshomaru was still alive." He bowed low, ready to excuse himself from them. "I'll go back to Inuyasha and tell him that Saya can go with you guys…"

"Lady Rin has already left to fetch Saya herself," Shimofuri told the kit. "I expect she will arrive there in a matter of hours."

"But Inuyasha will never believe it's her!" Tsukiyume blurted.

Shippo stared at her, confused but silent, patient enough to wait for the others to explain themselves.

Shimofuri sighed, already seeing Inuyasha's reaction and dreading it. "Young fox," he said, addressing Shippo, "I need you to return to Inuyasha's home as fast as you can and let him know that the woman calling herself Rin truly is Lady Rin."

"What's different about her?" Shippo asked warily.

All three of them were hesitant to reveal it. At last Jaken said, "She's no longer human—she's become an inuyoukai."

* * *

A/N: That's it for now! Until next time!


	28. The Finest Guardian

A/N: Sorry for my delay, I have been busy with classes. More and more it's looking like I'm going to try and get a masters. More schooling because graduating and entering the workforce now would mean I'd have a low paying job in retail or I don't know, shoveling road kill. Just for my sanity I don't want to leave four years of college to do that just yet. Turns out most English majors end up with this decision and many of them gladly take it because it postpones _real_ work. I hate lift sometimes. But this turned out longer than I wanted it to and you'll hate me because we didn't quite get to… …whatever. I'm going to just shut up.

Dislcaimer: I do not own them. I only own me. And that just barely.

Last Chapter: Shiroihana was able to convince Shimofuri to keep Rin's transformation a secret to avoid insulting Ginrei who basically gets passed from one husband to the next. Jaken caught on too, and he didn't like it at all. Shiroihana met with Sesshomaru then and forced him to give Ginrei to Shimo. When she began announcing it with a scribe writing the records, Ginrei get very upset, especially when she heard that Shiroihana is going to adopt Hanone. A guard came and told Shimo that a fox had come to see his sister. He, Tsuki, and Jaken met with the fox, Shippo, told him of Sess's condition and then told him to head back as fast as he could to make sure that IY handed Saya off to the transformed Rin.

* * *

**The Finest Guardian **

In the evening after Saya had asked Inuyasha if he was a princess, she still had no idea exactly what one was and what it entailed. At suppertime she ate the fish she had helped clean with Kasai, Kagome, and Akisame. This fish, flavored and cooked, was exquisite compared to the salted, dried fish that Saya had lived off of during her nightmarish stay with the humans on the beach where she'd first awoken after the earthquake. She ate with vigor but fastidiously cleaned up after herself, remembering mealtime etiquette that her mother has instilled in her from the moment she had had her first taste of real food.

When she caught sight of Masuyo staring at her from across the table where he sat beside his younger brother Riki and older sister Kasai, Saya quickly looked away, intimidated. If Masuyo was her servant, and Riki supposedly too, she needed to give them a task—and fast. But what?

A bright white bone sticking out of the fish on her plate as she clawed at it, pulling the flesh apart, started an idea inside her mind. The whiteness of the bone was like the color of the stone that the evil fox Aojiroi Jinsoku had given her. Distantly she remembered tossing the stone away, hearing it skid and scrape and roll over the hardwood floor. Where was it now? Although she associated it with the fox and with the horrible memory of hearing Inuyasha say that her father was dead, Saya still missed it. She thought of her mother's concern over the stone, the hesitance. She remembered asking her mother if the fox had been telling the truth about it having magic inside.

She had heard nothing about her mother, alive or dead. The stone was all she had left of either of them aside from ruined robes and her own facial features.

After supper she found Masuyo and wasn't surprised when the boy bowed low to her and tried to speak again in formal words. They were awkward in his mouth, unfamiliar and foreign. Saya considered correcting him—unlike the demon slayer boy she was accustomed to many strict formalities, so much so that Saya was unfamiliar with the informal words—but the thought was fleeting. She practiced pronouncing his name, repeating it twice before she issued her order.

"Find my stone."

Masuyo lifted his head and stared at her, his face twisting with confusion. Then he closed his eyes tightly, as if looking at her hurt him. "Oops," he muttered to himself.

"What?" Saya asked.

"I looked at you. That means I could go blind." The words horrified Saya but Masuyo didn't appear concerned in the slightest. Instead he asked, "What stone? Any stone? Don't you mean a jewel?"

Saya shrugged, though with his eyes closed Masuyo would never see it. "I guess so…_jewel._ It is very pretty like a jewel."

Masuyo cocked his head to one side, thinking. "So it's not a jewel you're looking for, my lady?"

"No, it's a stone that…that the fox—he gave it to me." She looked down at her clawed hands, clutching them, recalling the smoothness and feel of the stone.

"Oh!" Masuyo yelled, so loud and suddenly that Saya yelped with fear and took a step back from the bowing boy. Masuyo peeked at her through one eye when he heard her retreating footstep. "I think I've seen that thing lying around in the kitchen!"

Before Saya could say anything else the boy hopped up and raced out of the sitting room where the families had shared dinner. In the kitchen he purposefully fell, tumbling, onto the floor and slid over the smooth surface. The thumping sound made Miroku, Kohimu, and Tisoki, who were cleaning pots and dishes that the women had used in cooking, glare with a mixture of surprise, amusement, and annoyance.

"Masu?" Tisoki called, laughing. "Is that you?"

Masuyo crawled over the floor, letting his knees bump and his palms slap over the slick wood. He grunted with effort as he answered his older brother, "What?"

"What the hell are you doing?" Kohimu asked, more annoyed than amused.

Masuyo pushed his thin, bony arm between buckets, baskets, pots, and other kitchen equipment, probing. He pulled out a wad of white hair—Inuyasha's or Koinu's, left from a haircut years ago. Then his nimble fingers pulled out more forgotten tidbits, lost in Kagome's kitchen over the years. A purple pacifier. An empty, plastic container that read "Children's Tylenol." The cloth head of a toy doll. A dusty, chipped chopstick, dented with deep holes that had clearly been made by fangs. A type of shoe that he didn't recognize with shredded shoelaces and mangled soles and sides.

Frowning with disgust, Masuyo lifted the shoe and said, "This looks like a dog chewed on it!"

From the wash basin with Kohimu and Tisoki, Miroku started to laugh. "What are you looking for, Masu?"

"Princess Saya said I have to find her stone!"

"Princess Saya?" Tisoki repeated, snickering.

Kohimu nudged his younger brother with one elbow and jerked his chin toward the kitchen entryway. When Tisoki looked he saw Saya waiting there timidly, watching Masuyo work. Each item that he pulled out she leaned forward to examine and then wrinkled up her nose at the dust and destruction, then she pulled back and waited.

At last Masuyo shouted, "I think I found it!"

As he pulled himself upright, Masuyo closed his eyes and thrust out his hand, palm up, showing Saya what he'd found. Saya slowly took what he offered, smiling shyly. White and smooth, fitting perfectly into her palm, it was undoubtedly her stone.

"Thank you very much, Masuyo-sama," she intoned automatically, not bothering to remember that he was supposed to be _her_ servant at this time.

Miroku, Kohimu, and Tisoki watched over their shoulders, the dishes forgotten in their bafflement.

"Why does he have his eyes shut?" Kohimu muttered, frowning.

Miroku sighed and resisted the urge to smack himself in the forehead. "I think I know what it is. I told him not to look directly at royal women."

"So?" Tisoki asked.

"Actually what I told him _exactly _was that a princess or an empress would blind him with her beauty, so he couldn't stare." Watching his son present the white stone to Saya with his eyes closed and his face averted was almost too funny. It was as if Masuyo expected Saya to slap him at any moment for some wrongdoing.

"I think you warned him about it too early!" Tisoki chuckled. "He'll spend all his time looking at boys now!"

Kohimu cuffed him with a soapy, wet hand. "Idiot."

* * *

Saya toddled behind and around Kagome, Akisame, and Kasai. The sun had set outside and the families were nearing bedtime, but bath time came before rest. Inuyasha and Koinu acted as the mules, hauling water from the pump to the tub inside. Kasai lit the fire that heated the water through a system of vents and pipes outside (A/N: I'm just making this up by guesswork! Don't hate me!).

While they waited for the water to heat up the group of girls and two women—Kagome and a weary, still exhausted Sango—stripped down to undergarments or under robes, or nakedness, as in Saya's case. The room gradually warmed with steam, frizzing their hair and relaxing them. Kasai stayed close to her mother, helping Sango comb out her hair and undress, even walk if she needed the help. As the only daughter in her family every birth became partly Kasai's responsibility too. Although sons were valued above daughters, for a mother nothing was as indispensible as a strong, healthy daughter during labor, childbirth, and recovery. Sango loved her sons, but there were many times when she'd wished for another girl.

Kagome also spent most of her time with Sango, whispering to her about Saya, as quietly as she could, always with an eye on the young child. Fortunately Saya and Akisame were engrossed in a game of riddles, unaware of that their elders were discussing them.

"Sesshomaru can't be…" Sango protested when Kagome told her Inuyasha's interpretation of Saya's abandonment and the fox's unbelievable story. She shook her head, unable to believe that a powerful youkai such as Sesshomaru would die so unexpectedly. "There must be a different solution."

"Inuyasha doesn't think so," Kagome murmured. "Just remember not to mention him around Saya. She's been handling it very well but," Kagome broke off, her eyes straying to the little girl and narrowing with concern. Her lips thinned. "I expect that when Inuyasha's father died it was a shock to everyone that knew him too. But that happened abruptly as well."

Sango's expression darkened, troubled. "I hadn't thought of that," she admitted.

In the silence that followed Sango examined Saya from her spot, letting her mind detach from the scene, analyzing it as only she, as a renowned demon slayer, could. Saya truly was Sesshomaru's feminized mirror image. Sango had seen and studied many hanyou during her training as a youth. Hanyou could be some of the most difficult monsters to kill. They could sometimes shape-shift so completely, like Naraku had, that not even another hanyou or youkai could sniff out the difference. Others could appear deceptively human. Some had extraordinary powers; others were weak and spent most of their lives hiding. There were good crosses and bad ones, visible mixes and hidden. Saya had inherited inuyoukai features dominantly as Inuyasha had, but her mixture seemed purer than Inuyasha's because she lacked the doglike ears. Saya had inherited the crescent moon on her forehead prominently, but at times, when Saya stood in a certain light, and with the steam in the air…Sango could almost see twin streaks on her cheeks too, standing out. The little girl's fangs were smaller and far less noticeable than Akisame, Koinu, and Inuyasha's were, but...

"How old is she?" Sango asked, frowning as she thought. "Was it four years ago that we saw Rin?"

"About that, yes…" Kagome answered, mentally calculating. "Maybe a little longer…"

Across the room Akisame turned and said, "I think it's warm enough now!"

"I agree," Kasai added. "How about it, Mom?"

Sango was watching Saya's face as the little girl smiled at them. The brightness of her gold eyes, the dull purple of the crescent moon on her forehead, the white flow of her hair, and on her cheeks, twin dashes of discoloration, thinly present. At times when Inuyasha was angry or distressed, she had thought she saw streaks like bruises just beneath his eyes. It was the mark of his demonic power, peeking through…was she seeing hints of the same in Saya too?

"Mom?" Kasai repeated, shaking her arm a little.

Sango blinked, bringing herself out of her reverie. She nodded. "Of course. Let's get in."

Before she followed Akisame, Kagome, Kasai, and Sango into the bath, Saya ran to the door on her spindly legs and set the white stone next to the closed screen. She heard Inuyasha and Koinu on the other side, bickering about something, but she didn't stop to eavesdrop. Knowing they were present comforted her, almost as much as once hearing her mother's breath puffing next to her at night, or taking in her father's distinctive scent…

As she hurried back to the tub her thoughts skittered, rearranging themselves, burying the memories, making new ones. Her past life was over, mysteriously gone forever. Instinctively her mind and body knew that she could not dwell, she had to live on in the present.

* * *

Night in the Inuyasha household was quiet and peaceful overall. Sango, Miroku, and the newborn baby Koudo slept in one of the bedrooms while in another, the smallest one, Masuyo and Riki slept together, hugging and snoring lightly. Kasai, Tisoki, and Kohimu shared the last bedroom, which was normally Koinu's.

Normally, if Saya hadn't been present, Inuyasha and Kagome would've slept alone in their bedroom together as usual, forcing Akisame and Koinu to sleep with Masuyo and Riki perhaps. But with the addition of Saya, Inuyasha gave up his privacy with Kagome, keeping his family bundled tightly together during sleep. This was partly to ease Saya by surrounding her with blood relatives, and partly to calm Inuyasha's fear of attack. His greatest fear was separation, losing a family member because he had lost track of them.

So it was that Kagome slept with Akisame nestled against her and Saya tucked close to Koinu. Inuyasha took the floor, watchful and alert for most of the night, but at last, towards dawn, his eyes drifted closed, giving into exhaustion.

Outside, as the first golden rays of sunlight stretched over the eastern mountain peaks to touch the shutters on Inuyasha and Kagome's bedroom window, a new visitor had reached them…

* * *

An internal and external strength that Rin had never known before, or ever imagined existed, drove her forward. She avoided the main roads now, preferring to avoid humans and their always negative attention. She clawed her way through thickets and bramble, underbrush taller than she was, maple saplings in full leaf, springy pines, and dense fern groves.

At last she came to the wall surrounding Inuyasha's property. In the gray-blue light of the predawn, mere minutes ago, she'd come into the village that had once houses Kaede and Kikyo. She skirted around it, cutting through hills, slashing apart obstacles. When she ran into the wall, in the middle of the forest, it surprised her. She had only seen it from the front before, now she had to scale it rather than passing through the gate.

She needed to jump, a much harder task than one would think. Since her transformation, Rin had had to relearn basic things about her body: its needs, its endurances, its habits, and its performance. Running, walking and jumping were new things to her now. She stared up at the wall, coated gray in the darkness of predawn. A few trees stretched their limbs to the wall, brushing the top of it with their leaves, dripping dewy moisture onto it. As a human she would've scaled the wall using them, but now she felt the springy power in her feet, knees, calves and thighs. She could jump it, but she would be clumsy like a kitten. Experience was what made the grown cat land on its paws with the skill of an acrobat.

Her first attempt propelled her easily above the treetops, but she was so shocked by the ease of the jump that she scrabbled in panic at the wall. Her claws raked over the wood and stone, slowing her descent but not stopping. She nearly fell over when she landed and then paused for a moment to breathe, winded by surprise. Rin's next jump was more cautious and she fell short. The landing was smoother, without any of the awkward panic of the first.

When the third try ended in failure too, not because she missed the wall, but because she couldn't grab onto it effectively, Rin changed tactics. She leaped into the trees that touched the wall with their dewy leaves. She landed skillfully on a branch, instantly grasping it with hands and feet. Rin rushed along its length without wobbling and hopped onto the top of the wall, then down into the long yellow-green grass on the other side.

She was atop a small rise in the grassy land. Below her, some distance away, Rin scented Inuyasha's home. The remnants of a fire, of food and family. Rin recalled living in their home for weeks while she'd carried Saya inside her womb, a precarious life that she didn't dare hope for. The priestesses had healed her where other doctors had failed, saving Saya in spite of the harshness of travel. Inuyasha's home had been a sanctuary for her—and now it had saved Saya for the second time.

_I must thank him,_ she thought. _I owe him so much…_

Rin rushed down the hillside, slower than she could have, unsteady on her new feet for the first time as she considered how her appearance had changed. What would Saya think?

When she reached flat ground, Rin ducked, hiding behind a small broadleaf tree. She knelt at its base and picked at the dirt, ready to smear it over her face to hide the markings—but she stopped before her fingers touched skin. She was still thinking as if she were human. Saya had the nose of an inu-hanyou. She would know the difference in her mother whether Rin tried to cover it up or not.

Her heart tightened in her chest, flip-flopping. She shook her hands, flicking the fingers, rubbing off the dirt. Details emerged and rose to the forefront, things she hadn't bothered to think about in her desperation to reach Saya. Shiroihana had dressed and bathed her before she had left the Nanka castle. She was still wearing the robe and in spite of her journey the fabric remained remarkably clean. Even the little white socks that she had worn out of the castle were barely dulled with brown and gray dirt or green grass stains. Her hair was pinned up and as neat as when she had left the bath with Shiroihana.

_I am inuyoukai._ The realization hit her with panic again. _What will Saya think?_ She had arrived, she could not turn away. Her palms itched with the need to hold her child, to feel Saya's warm skin, to see her golden eyes gleaming, and even to take in the scent of her daughter, something she had never been able to do fully with her human nose.

Rin stood up from her little hiding spot behind the tree and advanced on her brother-in-law's home with a stiff spine and a pounding heart. The first ray of the sunlight reached over the wall around Inuyasha's estate, coloring the tops of the tallest trees around the home red like fire or blood.

* * *

Koinu's eyes sprang open. The room was gloomy and stuffy, filled with the combined body heat of his sister, his little cousin, his mother, and his father. Hunger roiled in his stomach and is mouth was dry with a foul taste. He didn't rise immediately to tend his needs because they weren't demanding. More important was the question of _why_ he had awoken at all. At times Koinu woke with a sense of intuition, a survival instinct that was hit or miss in every creature, but eons old.

The pup listened, tuning his ears into the breathing patterns of everyone around him. His father was sleeping, which probably meant that he was safe.

Slowly, careful to avoid waking Saya who was sleeping close by, Koinu rose from the bed and stepped cautiously past where Inuyasha was slouched near the doorway. The sliding screen had been left partially open. Koinu inched his way through it as silently as he could. It was a personal challenge to escape the room without waking Inuyasha. When Koinu exited the room without his father's breathing pattern changing the pup grinned with triumph and moved for the kitchen to get something to drink.

In the kitchen Koinu raided the cupboard where Kagome kept all of the quick snacks and drinks from her era. To keep little thieving hands from consuming all of her stored "Ninja food," Kagome had installed a small padlock onto the cupboard. Koinu and Akisame enjoyed the padlock, silently rejoicing in their mother's craftiness because it challenged them both to outwit her with intrigue of their own. Akisame often made a show of whining and pleading for treats from the cupboard at times when she knew Kagome would say no because she wanted to convince their mother that the lock worked.

It didn't, of course. No matter how many times Kagome changed the lock combination on the padlock, Koinu, Akisame, and Shippo could pick it out with their excellent ears. A tiny click in the metallic lock from her era always gave away the secret numbers, and once they knew which ones were right it was only a matter of the correct combination. Kagome knew that her children and the clever kitsune could pick the lock using their ears, and she watched them, suspiciously for some time after it was installed, but she saw no evidence that they had figured out the secret to unlocking it. As soon as she slackened her watch over the lock, Akisame, Koinu, and Shippo worked together as one to crack the combination. Shippo would find one number while Kagome was away in the bathroom, Akisame made out most of the others when she snuck out in the middle of the night. It was Koinu that cracked the right order while Kagome was fighting with Inuyasha in the living room.

The three little criminals maintained the illusion that they were innocent by taking only one or two treats in a raid. They had to be careful because if they raised Kagome's suspicions and she started counting her treats and noticed them missing—the jig would be up. They'd have to crack a whole new combination and combat her watchfulness.

That morning Koinu cocked his ears and closed his eyes, listening to the lock as he always did while turning it. _Four right, 33 left…_

A small sound, a thump like a foot on a stair, slashed at his brain. Koinu's concentration on the lock failed. His white ears swiveled back toward the kitchen doorway behind him. His heart leaped in his chest, trying to escape with sudden fear.

He had been wrong in assuming he was safe. He had woken out of intuition after all. The aura of a demon had stirred him right out of sleep…_inuyoukai…_

Koinu whipped around and smashed his head against the wooden cupboards. A whimper escaped his lips, the cry of a terrified child or puppy. He couldn't scent the stranger, but the aura was inuyoukai and it transported his brain back in time and place. He was five years old again, crushed to his uncle's chest. The coolness of the wood at his back became prickling cold. The little peach-fuzz body hairs on his neck, his arms, and his legs stood on end.

A shadow rose up on the paper screens covering the kitchen windows. Koinu's blue eyes took in the shape of a woman, a soft nose and a lump where hair was piled atop her head, but his brain warped the shape, trying to see danger. Koinu tasted blood in his memory and felt the pressure of Sesshomaru's hand. He opened his mouth but his jaw ached. Panic made the memories real. _I can't speak._

The shape on the paper in the windows paused. Its lips moved and a female voice called out, "Hello?" It was timid, weak.

The spell of terror crumbled, leaving Koinu's muscles as limp as jello. He stumbled onto his hands and knees, staring at the door, trying to find his voice.

"Is someone there?" the woman asked. "I—I've come to see Inuyasha…" After a pause she said, "I'm La…I'm Rin."

Koinu had time to remember Rin in his head, the way she had sat next to him and listened with rapt attention to Kagome's English lessons and the bump in her belly where Saya had slept, unborn. _Saya's mother._ An image of Saya sleeping next to him flashed before his mind's eye—then shouting from the back of the house, Inuyasha's voice.

"_Koinu! Koinu!"_ The hanyou's feet pounded over the wooden floor, purposefully waking the entire house. He was in the kitchen assessing the situation in less than ten seconds. The first order of business was Koinu's wellbeing and one quick glance at his son told him that the pup was unharmed but scared. He caught the aura and the shadow of the inuyoukai outside and made a swift decision. "Koinu—get Miroku then guard your mother and sister and Saya."

Although white as a sheet with his mouth open in shock, Koinu rose shakily to his feet. His jaw opened and closed on the air, trying to find his voice. _This inuyoukai says she's Rin…_

"Inuyasha," the woman called outside, sounding relieved. "Please—forgive my intrusion." Formal words slipped from her tongue easily and her voice grew in confidence.

Inuyasha eyed the door and the shadow on the window warily but verbally ignored her. He barked at Koinu, "Go!"

Koinu stumbled past his father and raced down the hall to make sure Miroku was awake.

"Inuyasha," the woman spoke again. "I am Rin. I've come for Saya. Please, may I have permission to enter your home? It would honor me to see you. I cannot thank you enough for watching over my child."

"You ain't Rin," Inuyasha snarled, ears falling flat. He tried to think fast. Was it the fox? The shape shifter outside his door was skilled at mimicking voices because the voice was Rin's, but the aura was not. He growled, "Sorry, but I don't let liars in my house."

"I'm not lying!" the woman replied, losing the confidence that formality had brought to her voice before. "Please, you must believe me…"

Inuyasha took a few steps closer to the door while fingering Tetsusaiga, ready to draw the fang and let it taste a shape shifter's blood. His golden eyes had crinkled with a hard, bitter emotion. "Sesshomaru's dead," he spat out, "how do you explain that, Lady Rin? How do you fucking explain Saya left in a village for weeks? Huh? What kind of…"

She interrupted him, "Lord Sesshomaru is _not_ dead!"

"Then why the hell did the both of you leave Saya in that village?" Inuyasha demanded. "Are you going to tell me my brother lost his daughter there? I might be a hanyou but I ain't stupid!"

"It was beyond our control!" she said, almost wailing. "Please—let me inside, let me see her…!"

"You aren't Rin! If you come in here I'll kill you!"

She was crying now, Inuyasha could clearly hear the tears in her voice, the mounting desperation. It troubled him, making his gut tense up with something like sympathy. He pushed the emotion aside, irritated with himself. _She's a good actor, nothing more. _

"What can I say to convince you?" she asked. "I know I am no longer human but I _am_ Rin. I _am _Saya's _mother._ Please, you must believe me!"

Behind him Inuyasha heard the others approaching. His ears flicked, listening. Miroku had come with his jangling staff; Sango's gait was slower and tired, coupled with her boomerang's thump as she used it like a walking stick. Also with them Inuyasha heard Kohimu and Tisoki, but not Kasai. She was probably helping Koinu guard the others…

He turned his head slightly and explained. "The bitch out there says she's really Rin. She says Sesshomaru's alive." He paused, feeling himself tense. "She says she's come for Saya."

"She isn't human," Tisoki announced immediately. He held his sickle tightly, certain that he was going to have to use it.

Next to his brother, Kohimu added, "It must be a shape shifting fox that has managed to change its aura to confuse us."

"I agree. Demons cannot create human auras very well, but they can mimic other demons at times," Miroku murmured. "But it has not yet attacked, which is surprising."

"A demon specializing in shape shifting will be physically weak, relying on deception," Sango said.

Inuhyasha had been waiting for Sango's opinion above all. He nodded to Sango, sure that the demon slayer's words were right and thinking: _I will kill her…_

"Please!" the woman cried out, hearing their words. "I will do anything to prove my identity to you. Demon slayer—when I was pregnant with Saya you came to this home after miscarrying a child yourself. You were jealous of me because I hadn't lost my baby until I told you that I'd lost more babies than you had seen born…"

The words, aimed at Sango, stopped Inuyasha. He peeked back at the demon slayer with one eye and one ear cocked at her. Sango was still pale and exhausted from giving birth only days ago, but her expression was one of surprise. She blinked and her brow furrowed as she tried to think.

"Sango—the shape shifter may be a mind reader," Miroku suggested.

"Why won't you believe me?" the woman shrieked behind the door.

Kohimu answered her, "Because humans do not become demons!"

"What if I did?" she demanded. "What if you are wrong? What can I do to convince you? _I am not leaving without Saya!"_

Inuyasha growled, his ears laying flat. Powerful possessive emotions switched on inside him, swimming through his bloodstream. Deep at his core he was the dog, and foremost of all duties for a dog was protecting his pack. Although he had not consciously made the decision and had even resisted it, Saya had become part of his pack. She was his daughter now as much as she was Sesshomaru's. He had no doubt in his mind that something had happened to kill both Rin and Sesshomaru, leaving Saya with no one except _him._ He could not entrust her to _anyone_ else. It was as unthinkable as willingly leaving Kagome, Koinu, or Akisame, of passing them off to someone else, of shirking his greatest responsibility.

"The only _fucking_ way you can convince me is if you bring Sesshomaru to me _personally_. You're _not Rin and Sesshomaru is fucking dead. _So get the hell off my land before I cut you in two with Tetsusaiga!"

The woman ignored his threats, saying, "You'll give Saya to Lord Sesshomaru?"

"He's dead!" Inuyasha spat out, heatedly.

"Why do you keep saying that?" The shadow on the window screen shook its head, confused. The voice changed, becoming small and gentle, a mother's voice trying to sooth her spooked child. "Inuyasha-sama—your older brother is alive."

Inuyasha bristled, disturbed. He backed away from the doorway and the screen where the woman's shadow was, the perfect profile of her face. Inuyasha paced impatiently. "If Sesshomaru _is_ alive, why isn't he here?"

"Lord Sesshomaru is ill."

Inuyasha growled and snarled like a dog, but no coherent words came out. He turned to regard the demon slayers waiting tensely behind him, torn apart with fear and doubt. He listened with both ears beyond the slayers for his family and younger children, anticipating an attack. What if the inuyoukai woman was a diversion? What if his family were dead right now while he bickered?

Miroku said, "Inuyoukai do not become seriously ill."

"Lord Sesshomaru's illness is unnatural." Her voice lost its coldness, weakening with emotion. "I have seen how weak it has made him. He will recover but only with time. We have been the victims of a supernatural attack…"

"Describe the illness," Sango interjected, suddenly interested.

Inuyasha snarled, ears flat with disgust. He motioned to Kohimu. "Go back and guard the others…" Kohimu nodded and hurried away, his bow with its quiver of arrows slung over both shoulders.

The woman outside was distracted by Inuyasha's orders, the shuffling footsteps as people moved inside. There was a pause before she tried to answer Sango's question. "It has weakened Lord Sesshomaru beyond the ability to travel. He has poor eyesight and," she stopped, uncertain and hesitant—or perhaps unable to come up with another symptom.

"She's lying," Inuyasha snapped. His pacing increased with his mounting agitation.

"I am not!" Rin shouted. Her shadow moved on the screens, then disappeared as she approached the kitchen door.

"Don't let her in!" Miroku yelped.

Inuyasha sprang at the door and unsheathed Tetsusaiga before it. He snatched the handle and threw it open. He was half crouched in a battle ready position, his lips parted and ready to scream the words of attack—but the inuyoukai woman was not in front of him as he'd expected. His eyes dropped downwards, down to his feet. She was on the wood of the porch, her forehead touching it, her slender neck with its flawless white skin exposed. For the first time Inuyasha could smell her as well as feel the aura. Her scent was young but strong, hinting at great power. She was unreceptive but of a good breeding age—and there was something else. It was a familiarity. Inuyasha froze, staring down at her, and felt an inkling of…something. Truth? Trust? Was it possible that her words had some merit?

"Lord Sesshomaru's illness has made him into a mortal!" Rin cried, her words lightly muffled by the wooden floor. "Please! I beg you to listen, Inuyasha. The illness was the work of a crazed goddess. Let me see my child! I will take you to your older brother! I swear it!"

She raised her head and stared up at him. Inuyasha took a step back, retreating through the doorway even as he lowered Tetsusaiga. The inuyoukai woman stared up at him with bluish eyes, a color much like Shimofuri's. That similarity made him hesitate, thinking of the fox that had been sent by Shimofuri too. He asked, "What does Shimo-pup have to do with all of this?"

"Lord Shimofuri has generously kept Lord Sesshomaru safe through the worst of his illness. He also found me in the north and reunited me with Lord Sesshomaru."

"And he sent a fox to get Saya…?" Miroku asked, piecing the story together.

"Yes." Rin lowered her forehead to the ground again. Inside she was shaking with the desire to slash through her mate's brother and then the slayers just to rush in and find Saya. She hid her clenched hands with their white claws by sitting on them, putting herself in an awkward, helpless position.

"The illness made Sesshomaru human?" Sango asked, astounded.

One of Inuyasha's ears flicked back toward Sango, reregistering this news. It drew a blank inside his skull as impossible. Rin spoke in front of him, "Yes, it was the work of a goddess named Jishin. It was her intention to kill Lord Sesshomaru, but she has not succeeded."

Inuyasha allowed Tetsusaiga to touch the floor. The fang shrank, becoming a dull, clunky katana again. He watched Rin warily as he sheathed it and chewed over his next words internally. "Okay lady—if you take me to Sesshomaru I will let him have Saya."

Her body changed slightly, the back arching a little. "Please—may I see my daughter?"

Inuyasha growled, uncomfortably with the thought. He turned and looked questioningly to the slayers. "Sango, Miroku—do you think she could be lying?"

Miroku sighed and rubbed at his eyes tiredly. "Certainly, Inuyasha but isn't Saya the best test we have? If this is truly Lady Rin, Saya will know."

"I disagree," Sango announced, taking a deep breath. Her brown gaze, sharp and intelligent, landed on Rin and stayed there. "I believe her story but Saya won't be the final test—Sesshomaru will be."

"Feh," Inuyasha grunted, turning to glare cautiously at Rin, as if she were a spider that might bite him. "I'll let you see Saya, but you can't touch her. I don't trust you, got that?"

Rin sat up slowly and lifted her blue-eyed gaze to his golden. Her lips curled in a bittersweet smile. When she blinked there was a gleam of moisture. "I understand, Inuyasha. I would like to thank you, I owe you more than I could ever repay. You truly are the finest guardian that my daughter could have apart from myself and her father."

Inuyasha stiffened. "Feh," he snorted. "Stop the fucking flattery. You're not Rin." But the words were unconvincing even to his own ears.

"It is not flattery," Rin assured him, somberly. She looked as if she would speak more, but then dropped into another bow and stayed that way, hiding her face and her emotion.

Inuyasha watched her from his place acting as guardian in the kitchen doorway, his hand still resting on Tetsusaiga though it was now sheathed. Despite his earlier words, he found himself thinking: _They switched places, Rin and Sesshomaru. _He tried and failed to imagine his brother as a human just as he tried and failed to stop the sliver of sadness from slipping into his heart. _I am going to miss Saya._

_

* * *

Well that's all for now. I know you're all like, REUNION!! but I had all these details that wanted out, like Koinu, Aki, and Shippo's criminal acts concerning Kagome's snack food. Plus I felt a need to show IY's emotions here, his stubborness and determination not to let go of Saya unless he is one hundred and ten percent sure that she will be safe with her parents. That was my pressing need with this chapter. I as the writer had to convince IY to believe that possibly Rin and Sess are alive, and they legitimately want their daughter back. Le sigh. Don't worry, it is going to happen first thing next chapter. REUNION!!  
_


	29. Deception Uncovered

A/N: Listening to Billy Joel's "Lullaby." I cry every bloody time! Ugh! Crying like a baby…sniff.

Disclaimer: I do not own them.

Last Chapter: Saya had Masuyo find her white stone. Sango mused about hanyou kind and wondered if she was seeing Saya's demonic power sometimes in just the right light. Rin reached IY's home and faced off with him, pleading to see her daughter and have him understand that Seshomaru is alive. IY agreed that he would turn Saya over to Sesshomaru if he's alive, but he can't be certain that Rin is who she says she is, and he likes Saya too much to risk that he's wrong.

* * *

**Deception Uncovered**

First Rin heard the boy, Inuyasha's son Koinu, approaching. She heard his voice, hardly changed from the fluting, soft tone that she recalled hearing during the lessons Kagome had given four years ago. He was talking to Saya, soothing her.

"It's okay Saya, just hold onto me. Don't let go, no matter what, okay?"

A memory skittered through Rin's mind. Koinu as a small child not much bigger than Saya now, had leaned over her belly while she had stayed with Inuyasha's family. The pup's white ears had made Rin smile down at him, though in those days she was far too heartbroken to laugh. Koinu hadn't grown into the ears at that time. They were large and floppy, even cuter than Inuyasha's if such a thing were possible. The pup listened to the unborn baby's heartbeat inside her skin, fascinated like a moth by flame.

The memory wiped clear as soon as Koinu came into sight. He was holding Saya in his arms though Rin's daughter wasn't all that much smaller than he was. Rin's heart tightened up like a fist inside her as Koinu sat down on the floor inside the kitchen, following some sign from his father. Saya shifted in his lap, looking around her, asking silent questions. She shook like a frightened puppy, confused by the behavior of the adults around her and by the prickling presence of a foreign inuyoukai aura.

Inuyasha was standing in the kitchen doorway, between Saya and Rin, a powerful barrier. When Saya saw him there she lifted her golden eyes and watched him with awe. Her small face softened with relief. Inuyasha calmed her. She had latched onto him as her protector.

Rin had trouble breathing. An emotion she hadn't expected, jealousy, constricted her chest and set her face burning. She pulled her hands inside her sleeves, but they weren't big enough to hide her clenched fists or her claws. _He has adopted her in his mind._ Before she had thought it was just stubbornness and Inuyasha's drive as even just part dog demon to protect his kin. Perhaps it was even just raw possessiveness. He had saved Saya, and now she was his.

But it was not that simple and it was far from uncaring. They had bonded. It was mutual.

She swallowed hard, trying to contain the rising emotion within her. She struggled to breathe as if nothing was wrong. Her attention bounced between Inuyasha's wide pant legs, Koinu's wary but concerned blue eyes, and Saya's face upturned and beaming at Inuyasha. When she met Koinu's stare, the rising jealousy in Rin's heart dissipated suddenly, as if Koinu had deflated it himself by sticking a pin into her side to let out the emotion. It wouldn't be hard, she realized, to love Inuyasha's children if she came upon them in need, alone without their father to protect them. She would protect them because it was the right thing for her to do—they were Saya's cousins after all—and then if Inuyasha and Kagome didn't materialize to take Koinu and Akisame away…

_I would adopt them,_ Rin thought. _I would ask Sesshomaru to take them in. _And then she knew something that she could do to further prove her identity and her gratitude to Inuyasha. _I will vow that I will help him if he needs it, and if his children are caught without him I will protect them myself and never turn them over unless it is Inuyasha or Kagome themselves. I will vow it to him and I will make Sesshomaru do the same…_

"Yo," Inuyasha called, startling Rin out of her thoughts.

"Yes?"

Saya's attention transferred to Rin at last when she heard her mother speak. Her face paled immediately. She said, tentatively, "Mamma?"

The silence that swamped the room was unbearably loud. Rin barely noticed it as she searched for her voice, trying to speak. "Saya—I'm so…" she choked on the words and fell silent as she saw her arms reaching out and realized that without being aware of it she was trying to go into the kitchen and snatch Saya out of Koinu's hold. She felt Inuyasha's eyes on her, narrowed and ready to strike.

Then Saya's face, white as a sheet, changed into fear. "Uncle! _Uncle! Don't let her take me!"_

"Is that not your mother, Saya?" Miroku asked, stiffly. He and the other slayers stood just behind Koinu, ready to race to his aid if Rin lunged forward or attacked.

Tears started to roll down the tiny girl's cheeks. "It's the fox! The fox!" She squirmed in Koinu's arms, turning her back on Rin, clinging desperately to her cousin. "Daddy's dead! Daddy's dead!"

"No, Saya," Rin yelled. "Your father is alive! Your fa—your daddy misses you so much, Saya. He is worried about you. He wanted to see you, but he's sick." She stopped, sighing and closing her eyes, unable to watch as Saya sobbed in someone else's arms. Her voice trembled when she spoke again. "Your little sister Hanone is there, and so is Lady Ginrei. And Jaken too. They all miss you very much. And I missed you Saya. You were the only thing I thought about. I—" She turned her head and pleaded with Inuyasha, "Let me hold her, please. I can't stand to have her crying like that…"

Her request troubled him. Rin could see sympathy in his golden eyes, but hesitation in his crossed arms and flattened ears. "Feh," he muttered. "Saya doesn't think you're her mother. No."

Rin gnashed her teeth together. Her blue eyes flicked to Saya. "This is criminal!" she growled. She forced herself to refocus on her daughter's back and Koinu's gentle face. "Saya!" she shouted. "Saya! I am _not_ a fox! I _am _your mother!"

Saya was too distraught by the returning memory of Aojiroi Jinsoku and the supposed news of her father's death that she was deaf now to Rin's words. Koinu shifted her on his lap, trying to force her to face Rin. "Saya, Saya it's okay. You're safe. No one is letting any foxes take you away—but the lady there on the porch isn't a fox, is she?"

Koinu's touch and his gentle words gradually sank in and Saya sniffled as she risked staring at Rin one more time. Her eyes were puffy and red from crying, but adding to the perception of redness were the twin pinkish streaks that had appeared on her cheeks. Koinu tenderly wiped away her tears with clawed fingers, touching her hair and supporting her shoulders. "Dad thinks this woman might be your mother, Saya, and she says your father is alive."

Saya made a face but she didn't turn away from Rin again. "The fox said…" but she couldn't remember what he had said through her grief and her new interest in this visitor. It was not her mother because her mother had been human like Kagome, but the inuyoukai woman looked a lot like her mother. She tried to put this thought into words in a shaky voice. "She's like Lady Ginrei, not like Momma. My momma was like Aunt Kagome."

"It's still me, Saya," Rin assured her in a tiny voice, afraid to hope. She pleaded with Inuyasha again. "Let me hold her just once. If she smells me she'll know…_please…"_

Inuyasha frowned. "No. I've seen some damn good foxes fool smart people before. You ain't getting me." His expression hardened. "If you're lying about Sesshomaru I'll kill you."

Rin bit her lip hard to restrain her own anger at the threat. "Of course."

Inuyasha moved further into the kitchen, purposefully blocking a portion of Rin's view of Saya. "Enough wasting time. I'm going to take Saya and follow _her_ to see if Sesshomaru is alive. Miroku, would you come with me in case there's trouble?"

The monk nodded solemnly. "Of course, Inuyasha."

"Good—everyone else stays here. We'll be back in a few days." He looked down at Koinu and said, "Son—take Saya back and let her say goodbye to everyone. We're leaving in a few minutes."

* * *

Saya soon found herself bombarded by faces. Kagome hugged and kissed her, wishing her luck. Akisame's smile was sad but her embrace genuine. "I'm going to miss you, Saya!"

When Masuyo came to her with Riki both boys were fatigued with minds clouded by recent sleep. Riki mumbled a goodbye and then Masuyo stepped forward. Unlike when he had approached her the day before, his blue eyes stayed open and as alert as they could be at the crack of dawn. He hugged her as his brother had, but with more feeling. Saya had expected him to bow and try to speak in the formal, flowery way of a servant bidding his mistress goodbye. As he pulled away he touched his lips to her cheek and blushed as he said, "Goodbye Princess Saya!"

It was informal, an official end to their game. For a moment Saya thought of the kiss to her cheek, but her mind was already filled to the brink with warring emotions, primary among them was confusion. She brushed her cheek with one hand, feeling the little dot of Masuyo's saliva and that was that.

Kasai, holding the new baby Koudo, packed Saya a little bundle of rice cakes and some of the spiced fish that they'd had the night before. Through the thickness in her skull Saya managed to see Kasai's uncertainty, the fear in her dark violet eyes.

The eldest of Miroku and Sango's children didn't wish her goodbye. Their weapons and their attention stayed focused on the inuyoukai woman that knelt on the veranda outside the open kitchen door. As the sun had climbed higher it framed the woman's sleek form, her perfect face with the turquoise streaks and the blue black hair pinned atop her head.

Saya stared at the woman, distractedly, while Sango tried to tell her goodbye. Only when the demon slayer brushed Saya's cheeks did the little girl look away from the inuyoukai woman. She blinked with surprise at Sango's touch. "What?" she peeped.

"I'll pray for you, little one." She paused and ran the thumb and index finger of one hand over Saya's cheek again. Saya stared back at the demon slayer without flinching. "Brave," Sango said with an encouraging smile, "and you look just like your father. Don't be scared, Inuyasha will take care of you."

And then she was with Koinu, pressing her face into his clothes, inhaling his scent. He had been the first to befriend her truly, the first to offer a kind word. Hot tears filled her eyes when she remembered that he had also felt the fury of her claws. She had shed her cousin's blood. He was smiling when he pulled away from her, but the sight and smell of Saya's tears made him frown.

"What's wrong?"

"I—this lowly one wishes to…" but the words gummed up in her mouth and Koinu didn't understand what she was trying to say.

He smiled reassuringly and poked her playfully in the stomach. "Don't be scared, Saya. Be happy. Dad will protect you and…" he leaned close to whisper to her as if revealing a secret. "I think that's your mom out there waiting for you. Remember you wanted to go home? That's what's happening now." His smile was warm but there was a sad shine of tears in his eyes.

And then Inuyasha scooped her up and both families began hollering out their goodbyes. Inuyasha's footsteps rocked her from side to side and the world spun as he turned and ducked and changed directions. As the sunlight fell on her in the outside world and fresh scents of pollen, birds, and insects hit her nose, Saya struggled to look for the inuyoukai woman again. The woman led the way with the monk Miroku between her and Inuyasha.

Koinu's words stayed inside Saya's mind, bouncing around. _That's your mom waiting for you._ She clung to Inuyasha's haori and cried quietly, unable to comprehend and untangle the swarming mass of confusion, fear, and hope that warred inside her. Inuyasha made a deep humming sound in his chest, like a cat's purring, and tenderly stroked her white hair. The combination worked like a magic charm. Peace descended over Saya and fatigue claimed her. Her body went limp in her uncle's arms, fast asleep.

* * *

The dispute in the castle raged on in spite of the hour, in spite of the fact that the scribe had fled. Shimofuri had not returned from seeing the kitsune, but since he had left the sunlight had touched the window screens and already the room where Sesshomaru stayed had grown stuffy. Shiroihana opened the screens while Ginrei and Sesshomaru talked, while a wife tried to understand her husband's decision.

"I did not say anything about Hanone," Sesshomaru repeated, over and over again. His voice had deepened and strengthened over time. He was recovering, but Shiroihana already had what she wanted. Her son did not _want_ to give up Ginrei, and he was working with her, rather than commanding her. He was sympathizing.

Ginrei could not be consoled. She clutched Hanone close to her while she sobbed, demanding that Sesshomaru change his mind. "If you refuse to accept all this no one will challenge you! Your condition is _temporary!_ I have stood by you—don't send me away! Please…"

"I am indebted to Shimofuri for his protection," Sesshomaru murmured. "This is…" he stopped, cutting himself off. He was hidden behind the screen, protected from prying eyes that might see his emotion. He pitied Ginrei, passed like an object between husbands and her child stolen from her. Sesshomaru had never been able to bring himself to take Hanone from Ginrei. It was too cruel. He would just have another pup with her, hopefully a son. She would keep Hanone and he would raise the boy. But his mother's plot, her threat, and his illness had conspired against him.

He drew a deep, silent breath and turned his thoughts to his mother even as Ginrei tried to change his mind again.

"Please Lord Sesshomaru—at least stop her from taking my baby! _Please?_" When her begging was answered only by silence, Ginrei glared at where Shiroihana stood silently by the door, listening. Ginrei's face curled into a bitter snarl of hate. "If _you_ weren't here Lord Sesshomaru would never consent to this. What did you do to him? What did you say?" She directed her voice to the screen once more. "Lord Sesshomaru! Without a wife, who will give you a son? I promised to give you a son! I will have as many as you want—just let me keep my daughter—let me keep Hanone…"

Sesshomaru closed his eyes, blocking out the growing light in the room. His head had started to throb and his chest burned lightly. _Am I falling ill again?_ But the pain was endurable, far less taxing than the bone pain had been the first time. He had either grown accustomed to it or the returned pain had indeed lessened.

Beyond the screen Shiroihana answered Ginrei's attack. Sesshomaru focused on his mother's face and her voice, recalling the way she had sat beside him and first proposed the plan to him. Shiroihana was never one to do things simply. At her core she was a manipulator, a conniving bitch. It was a fact he had learned as a pup. It was a primary reason why he had begun hiding his emotions as much as he could, stifling them. Shiroihana couldn't use them if she couldn't see them or predict them. He had watched her manipulate his father over more than a century. After Inutaisho's involvement with Shiroihana more than half of his plans and actions were influenced or created by Shiroihana, but it was never the woman that enacted them. Shiroihana tricked Inutaisho into acting the way _she_ felt he should.

She did the same with her son. The question here was, how did Shiroihana benefit? The answer seemed to be Hanone, or perhaps that Shiroihana genuinely disliked Ginrei and wanted her gone. But that was too simple to be it.

Shiroihana had explained the reason for her desire to adopt Hanone and for Ginrei's remarrying. The clan was weak and falling apart. Families had been slaughtered by Sesshomaru's own hand. The latest onslaught by Jishin would be the end of them unless they began rebuilding the families.

"And what about my own bloodline?" Sesshomaru had asked her.

"There are unrelated clan families in the far south in these islands. There may be refugees in the Western mainland as well. I will find you a suitable bride my son."

At the time Sesshomaru had only been able to think about the insult that Ginrei would feel, the pain at giving up Hanone, and then the thought of remarrying turned his stomach sour. Rin would suffer through another indignation, more emotional trauma. Would she leave him again? His mind spun and reeled with the future—to the point that he hadn't watched his mother's face as clearly as he could have.

Usually the things that Shiroihana wanted when she manipulated a situation involved a benefit for herself or her son. How did she gain by forcing Sesshomaru to give up Ginrei? If Sesshomaru did not recover she would have no further grandchildren with _any_ inuyoukai blood in them. Did that mean she had taken Hanone as her own with plans of usurping him as Lord of the Western Lands? Hanone could be his only bloodline…

The fur was flying outside between his mother and his soon-to-be ex-wife.

"Why do you want Hanone? Why are you stealing _my child_ when you have a grown son?" Ginrei demanded, hysterically.

"It is in name only. Hanone will take my lands and represent my ancestors. We will both be a mother to her. It will further the alliance between Lord Shimofuri and Sesshomaru because she is your child and will be tied therefore to Lord Shimofuri's pups as well. And the boy from the north will marry Hanone one day, a fine and honorable match for everyone. Why are you so upset by this, Lady Ginrei? You must accept my wisdom as your elder. Hanone will always be your daughter and I will allow you to raise her for several more years before—"

"Mother," Sesshomaru called, interrupting her purposefully.

Shiroihana made a loud sound of irritation, a gruff sigh. "What is it?"

"Please come and speak with me."

"I am speaking to you now!" Shiroihana snapped.

Sesshomaru knew he had found a weak point. _She does not want me to see her face._ He persisted with more energy, ignoring the pain in his head and bones. "Mother, come and speak with me here."

She growled low in her throat but did as he requested. Sesshomaru was careful to control his own intensity, his need to find hints in her face belying the truth. Mother and son were playing a deadly game of cat and mouse. Traditionally it was Shiroihana who always prevailed.

Shiroihana knelt at his side with a tender smile on her face. It didn't reach her bright golden eyes. "What is the matter, my son?"

_Odd._ Already she was giving something away, if only he could see what it meant. She usually called him by name when speaking to him directly with no one else present. Why the show of affection…of pity? Was it feigned? She had called him _my son_ earlier as well, while detailing her plans for his remarriage.

As his mother touched his forehead, pretending to check for a fever, Sesshomaru felt certain that she was manipulating him, lying to him. A dark fear yawned wide inside him. What if his own mother were to turn against him? If she had stolen his only heir and his wife, could Shiroihana set out to claim the whole of the Western Lands? Would Sesshomaru's army follow her?

* * *

After Shippo had gone, Tsukiyume had begun to rise from her spot along with Jaken, but Shimofuri was unwilling to leave the audience room. The thought of braving the deliberations with Shiroihana, Sesshomaru, and Ginrei started a pain of dread in his temple. He turned slightly, moving on his knees, and called for Jaken and Tsukiyume to stay in the room.

"My lord?" Jaken asked, confused. The little imp still wore a crotchety grimace over his wrinkled green skin. Tsukiyume lingered closer to the door, staring back at her brother with her brown-orange eyes and her white dog ears cocked with attention.

"Sit down." He gestured with one hand and watched them move deeper into the audience room to face him on the lower level of the room as underlings of a higher lord. Shimofuri disliked the formality of the motion—especially because he didn't feel Tsukiyume needed to be lowered in status when addressing him—but he needed the time it gave him to think up a reason for detaining them both.

As they sat he said, "Perhaps we may talk of strategy. Jaken, you represent Lord Sesshomaru. Tsukiyume, I have often used you as my advisor."

Jaken blinked, glancing questioningly between the hanyou girl and the inuyoukai lord. Wisely he stayed silent.

"The army coming down from the north outnumbers the forces I command here in the Middle Lands. Uncle's forces were scattered after his death…" he cleared his throat nervously, too aware of their eyes on him, baffled by his behavior. "We must uncover where they are and how soon they will arrive…"

The toad bowed and offered a suggestion. "Perhaps it would be wise for a kitsune spy to scout them out?"

"Yes," Shimofuri agreed with enthusiasm. "I think that would be the best course of action."

"I wonder if Shippo will run into them," Tsukiyume murmured, staring into her folded hands where they lied useless on her thighs.

"He can't afford to waste any time looking," Shimofuri said, stiffly. Tsukiyume's demeanor bothered him, providing a much-needed distraction. _What is between her and that fox from Inuyasha's family?_

"I have several connections with kitsune spies," Jaken offered with a sugary brightness. "If it would please Lord Shimofuri I would arrange for a scout to be sent out within the hour!"

Unthinkingly Shimofuri waved a hand at Jaken, giving the imp permission to leave. "That's an excellent idea."

"Brother—" Tsukiyume said, trying to remind him that Jaken was under their watch. He couldn't be trusted to keep Rin's transformation a secret. Shiroihana had ordered them to keep him under control and away from Sesshomaru.

Shimofuri hissed, shushing her and posing a sharp question. "Tsuki—refresh my memory regarding the kitsune that just visited us. How well do you know him?"

Suddenly all thoughts of watching Jaken fled from Tsukiyume's mind as she detected her brother's interest and suspicion. She blinked and tried to keep herself from blushing. "Shippo and I met when I was with Lady Rin at Inuyasha's home. He escorted me back here. He's a very talented shape shifter and trickster. I am indebted to him for his protection and his kindness."

"How _kind_ was he, exactly?"

Jaken toddled out of the audience room unnoticed by the siblings. He was in such a hurry, desperate to reach Sesshomaru, that he didn't even bother to close the sliding screen door of the audience room behind him, leaving it ajar for the servants and maids to peek in on the bickering siblings.

* * *

Sesshomaru snatched Shiroihana's hand in his own, gripping it tightly, though he knew it was feeble to his mother. His mother didn't struggle and didn't appear in the least bit alarmed. "What you are doing does not make sense," he said. "What are you planning?"

"You are all a bunch of superstitious puppies." Shiroihana tore her hand away from Sesshomaru's grasp as easily as she might have popped the head off a slug or snapped a grass stem. "I am rebuilding the inuyoukai clan. It should not alarm any of you!"

"I do not wish to remarry. Rin would not be pleased."

"If you do not offer _something_ of great worth to you to Lord Shimofuri for helping you during this illness…" she trailed off and shook her head, seemingly deeply ashamed of him. "The strife between my son and Lord Shimofuri is foolish to begin with. You might have been great allies throughout this time."

"I do not need Shimofuri as an ally."

"But you owe it to him now, don't you?" Shiroihana asked, taunting him. She tugged at the black hair of his human wig, reminding him of his sickness, his mortality.

"The insult is too grave to Ginrei."

Shiroihana's eyes narrowed, her lips thinned. "Do you really mean that, Sesshomaru? Are you only worried about future heirs?"

Sesshomaru's nostrils flared, giving away an emotion. Ginrei did deserve better than what he had given her. Sesshomaru could have loved her properly in another life, in a time before Rin. But with Rin he could never give his heart over to Ginrei. She had become an interesting ally and his illness had brought him closer to her. She had protected him and cared for him during his most vulnerable moments. What would his marriage to a stranger from the south be like? It would not come with the trust he had already established with Ginrei. And then there was Hanone…

"My concerns are irrelevant. Why do you insist on trading her to Shimofuri?"

"I told you—it will form an irrevocable alliance between you both. An alliance of blood. Think of Ginrei as a sister that you are betrothing…"

Something had come up in Shiroihana's words, in her face and eyes that attracted Sesshomaru's interest. It was the truth. The longer he kept her talking in circles the more Shiroihana's patience wore thin and as it broke truth showed through, remaining clean and smooth. Lies and deceit slowed, clogging up her throat, slowing her tongue. So far he had seen nothing he could construe clearly as a lie.

"I cannot afford to remarry while Rin is…" he stopped, unable to think of her short, mortal life. It was wrong to betray her in marriage while she was alive, as he had already done with Ginrei, but it seemed even more shameful to play a waiting game. As she aged he would long for the chance to marry and produce heirs, but at the same time, the agony of watching his human partner slowly dying over time while his nearly ageless body went on and on. He thought Inutaisho lucky for having died after Inuyasha was born.

He almost missed it through his own emotions, but Shiroihana revealed hesitation. Her eyes darted away from his face, flowing over the screen that separated them from Ginrei outside. Her gaze flicked back to him the moment she started speaking, slow and heavy. "I am sorry, but that complication must be dealt with. Rin is human; you have always known that you must marry an inuyoukai to produce proper heirs. I will find you a bitch from the south."

The lie seemed apparent to him here. He narrowed his eyes and lowered his voice to challenge her. "You have no intention of such a match. There is no woman from the south." He made sure to phrase the words as a statement of certainty rather than as questions. It would startle Shiroihana more if he were confident of his findings.

Shiroihana blinked and pulled back from him as if he'd made a motion to strike her. Sesshomaru had clearly hit a mark. She blustered, "Do not question me!"

"What is your true intention, Mother?" Sesshomaru asked her with growing anger. "Do you plan on usurping the Western Lands? Have you lost your mind?"

Her mouth dropped open in shock, an expression that relieved Sesshomaru. Shiroihana was not faking the reaction. Sesshomaru had really stunned her with his suggestion. Her golden eyes softened while her mouth clamped down into a tight frown. She hissed her next question, "How could you even _think_ such a thing?"

Before Sesshomaru could answer her or try to expose the true lie in her words, a sound came at the door, a loud tapping.

Shiroihana lifted her head and cocked it slightly, listening with a frown. "That must be Lord Shimofuri." She looked distinctly relieved by the interruption. Sesshomaru watched almost helplessly as she drew away from him, getting to her feet. "We will call the scribe and continue the deliberation and commit it properly to record. You will see, Sesshomaru, that I have done the right thing in time."

Ginrei was answering the door outside the screen while Shiroihana spoke. The door slid open and Ginrei found herself staring down at Jaken. The imp was lying flat on the floor, his fat claws dug into the hard wood of the floor. As soon as the door was opened he began screeching at the top of his small lungs, desperate to have his message heard.

"Lord Sesshomaru! Do not despair! Lady Rin is no longer human! She has been transformed!"

Ginrei said, "What are you talking about?"

Shiroihana was at her side a microsecond later. Her face was red and the whites of her eyes had seemingly shrunken, eaten up by the amber irises and black pupils. As Jaken looked up, startled by her movement, Shiroihana's foot shot out and connected with his face. The imp cried out and rolled away, shuddering with pain.

"What are you doing?" Ginrei yelled, alarmed. "What is going on here?"

"Absolutely nothing," Shiroihana snapped. "The imp has lost his mind with worry for my son, that is all."

"He said that Lady Rin—"

"It was _nonsense,"_ Shiroihana hissed. She looked back to the screen where her son would be sitting. Had his hearing improved enough that he had heard Jaken's message? The silence made her suspect that her manipulation was safe and for a moment the muscles in her spine released and she started to breathe normally, but then she heard Sesshomaru call her from behind the screen in a strange, quiet voice.

"Mother?"

Shiroihana stood by the door, unable to answer. He would rail against her now but accept the arrangement that gave away Ginrei. His mind would swim with the thought of a true bloodline with Rin, children that could all inherit the Western Lands. Her mind clamored, searching for a way out of the inevitable.

"Mother," Sesshomaru's voice was deeper, a full command.

Shiroihana's throat had closed, refusing to let any sound escape.

"Jaken was telling the truth," Ginrei realized aloud. Deadpan, she pieced together Shiroihana's plan for all to hear. "With Rin transformed Sesshomaru won't need _me_." Her silvered eyes flew to Shiroihana's stricken face. "And _you_ knew all along. You hid it from us and came up with an excuse to get rid of me…"

At last Shiroihana forced a breath through her throat, renewing her strength. "I did no such thing," she lied. "This is the first that I've heard of—"

"Liar!" Ginrei bellowed. "How stupid do you think I am? Stop insulting me!" She whipped around and stared to the screen. "And you knew about this too, _Sesshomaru!"_

Almost immediately he answered her, sounding hoarse with astonishment. "I did not know…"

"Stop lying to me!" Ginrei got to her feet, pulling Hanone up with her. The little girl whimpered and started to cry, burying her head into her mother's shoulder and sleeve.

"It's true!" Jaken announced, still grimacing with pain out in the hall. "Lady Shiroihana knew about it and tried to hide it! She wanted to make Lord Sesshomaru helpless with loss! But Lady Ginrei—Lord Sesshomaru did not know! Lady Shiroihana has deceived you all!"

"And what of my intended husband?" Ginrei snarled. "Was he deceived as well?" She stood stiff and still, waiting for Jaken's answer. _Please let him be innocent of this…_She already knew she would have almost no control over her fate. Sesshomaru would not agree to keep her as his wife. Hanone would cease to matter to him as he had the promise of pureblooded heirs from the woman he had always loved: Rin. Ginrei had liked Shimofuri, enjoying his youth and his optimism, his kindness toward her. She recalled the way he had tried to convince Shiroihana that he would adopt Hanone to make her happy, to keep Sesshomaru's evil mother from separating the two. _Could he deceive me too?_

"Lord Shimofuri—" Jaken never finished.

Shiroihana swept forward and stepped on the toad. His small body disappeared beneath her blue and white kimono hem. As he squirmed the fabric rippled, making the blue color look like real water.

"Let him finish!" Ginrei wailed.

Shiroihana ignored her shouted plea. In a low, conspirator's whisper, she tried to explain herself, "I did what I did to force my son to treat you properly, Lady Ginrei. Unless he was _forced_ to give you up while not knowing about Lady Rin you and I both know he would mistreat you. I was _protecting you._"

"You were getting rid of me and stealing my child!" Ginrei shouted. Her voice fell then. "Tell me whether Lord Shimofuri knew…"

"That hardly matters," Shiroihana laughed, nervously. "He will be a fine husband! I have seen from the beginning that you and he would pair well. It is a good match! You must not fret Lady Ginrei over trivial—"

"Tell me," Ginrei hissed, glaring. She pressed forward, as if about to fight with Shiroihana. She held Hanone to her with one arm and had the other lifted with the claws in a readied position. Her lips curled instinctually, showing her white fangs.

Shiroihana tilted her head up high, looking down her nose at Ginrei. She sniffed derisively. "As I said—you have no choice." She stepped back, revealing Jaken shivering on the wood floor. She pushed him with one foot indelicately. "Speak imp."

Jaken yelped with fear when she touched him and sprang up, rubbing his head where her weight had pressed him down. He peered up at Ginrei and frowned. "I want to speak with Lord Sesshomaru!"

Ginrei knelt down to be on his level. One hand remained free, ready to strike. "Tell me whether Lord Shimofuri knew about Rin's transformation."

Jaken fidgeted and glared at Shiroihana before he answered, "Yes, Lord Shimofuri knew. He was the first one to know."

"Was this _his_ idea?" Ginrei asked, her voice wheezing with a deadly, quiet rage.

"No," Jaken grumbled. He jabbed a claw at Shiroihana rudely. "It was hers!"

Slowly Ginrei rose to her feet and stepped out of Jaken's path. The space between herself and the open doorway to Sesshomaru's room was clear. "Go and speak to your lord then," she muttered.

Jaken scampered forward without thanking her. "Lord Sesshomaru! Lord Sesshomaru!"

For a moment Shiroihana and Ginrei stared at one another, hate passing between them on an almost visible level. Then Ginrei turned and started walking down the hall and a gradual, deliberate pace. Shiroihana called after her, "Where are you going? You cannot leave this castle! The army is nearly here. They will kill you as the mother of Sesshomaru's child."

The answer that flew back to her was sharp but monotone, "I will be in Tsukiyume's bedchambers."

Shiroihana frowned and shrugged her shoulders. Fastidiously she pulled on her hair, ran her claws through it. Her face burned red with embarrassment and anger and shame. She had been defeated by a toad. For a time she considered ignoring Ginrei, letting the inuyoukai woman go and do whatever she wanted. Perhaps she would be in Tsukiyume's bedchambers or perhaps she would flee out to the Northern army, what did Shiroihana care anymore? _But she has Hanone…_

Sighing and growling in frustration, she rushed back into the room where Jaken was babbling to Sesshomaru. She interrupted the imp impatiently. "You—follow Ginrei to make sure she doesn't do something stupid. And get a servant to fetch Tsukiyume to stay with her."

"I do not follow your orders," Jaken told her, huffing.

Shiroihana lost her patience and shouted, "If you do not do what I tell you to I will tear your arms off!"

Jaken flinched and then said to Sesshomaru, "My lord—am I to do as she says?"

"Yes," Sesshomaru answered.

"Very well," Jaken muttered. The imp slunk hurriedly past Shiroihana, trying to hide his fear but failing miserably.

"Mother," Sesshomaru called. The quality of his voice hinted to Shiroihana of a tranquil pond or a timeless pine forest whispering in a fall breeze, as if Sesshomaru knew no surprises and no trouble. It was that lack of emotion that made Shiroihana's bones turn to ice within her. She lowered her head and let her shoulders fall forward, revealing the weight of her own hidden emotion, of her essence stretched impossibly thin and at the breaking point.

When she didn't answer him, Sesshomaru continued on in the same way, cold and distant. "Where is Rin?"

Shiroihana clenched her jaw and her fists. "She left to see your bastard brother, looking for that hanyou child…"

"Leave."

"I will not be sent away," Shiroihana hissed. "I am your _mother._ My intention in hiding her transformation was entirely for your own benefit!"

"Leave this room or I will—"

"No threats," Shiroihana interrupted him sharply. "I will leave to find Lady Rin and bring her to you. Lord Shimofuri will conduct the deliberations without me. You will still form the alliance with him using Ginrei, will you not?" She held her breath while she waited for an answer.

"Yes," Sesshomaru replied, stiffly. "Leave."

"Sesshomaru," Shiroihana addressed him, bowing slightly though her son would never see it through the screen that shielded him. She strode out of the room and closed the door behind her before stumbling, nearly falling to her knees. Her hands shook as she covered her face, fighting the burn of emotion that swept through and over her. After a few deep breaths she stood up straight and proceeded at a slow, steady pace down the hall, moving with her usual stately grace. Inside she was broken and frazzled, her composure stood on the edge of a needle, balancing.

_I will do everything that I can to help him and when he has had a chance to think clearly he will forgive me. _Sesshomaru had the power to banish her, to take her little slice of ancestral land, and her castle. In a way mother and son were equal, able if they wished to steal power from the other. In his wrath, would Sesshomaru chase her out as a threat?

_I will send a kitsune to the north before I go after Rin, someone must force Yamome to listen to reason…_

_

* * *

Until next time...  
_


	30. White Light

A/N: I'm not sure how it happened but this turned out LONG. Usually I keep a running tally of how long a piece is, but apparently this time I lost my count, so I apologize. Hopefully it doesn't blow your mind!

Disclaimer: I do not own them.

Last Chapter: Shiroihana was found out. The secret is out to everyone. Ginrei found out about Rin's transformation via Jaken, a moment when everyone loved the little toad for his meddling. Shimofuri tried to interrogate his sister about Shippo, allowing Jaken the chance to slip away. Rin saw Saya again for the first time but Saya doubts her identity. Inuyasha does too, but they came up with a deal that IY would turn Saya over to Sesshomaru if it turns out that he is indeed alive. And the Northern army approaches Shimofuri to tear him down.

**White Light**

**

* * *

  
**

An unusual songbird flitted between the dark tree branches as night spread over the landscape. Rin sensed its movement but only dimly. She heard it rather than saw it. Her hearing was sharp, bringing the gentle fluttering of its wing beats and then the tiny scrape of its little clawed feet or its beak digging into the tree bark. When the wind picked up, rising around them and rushing down the road, it drowned out the sound of the bird and gradually Rin forgot to listen for it.

Saya had been dozing through most of the day, but as dusk came she sprang to life. The little girl's feet thumped rapidly over the ground as she hurried to keep up with the rest of the group. Rin set a fast pace and a steady lead, walking stiffly and fighting her own varied, burning emotions. Miroku walked behind her by about twenty-five feet, and Inuyasha maintained a membrane of fifteen or ten feet behind the monk. Saya dashed between them when she started to play, revealing the spirit that Rin loved and knew was her own. The tenseness of the adults could not keep Saya from being cheerful and brave in her own way.

Rin knew where the other three were at all times without turning to look at them. It was her ears that told her how far away they were or when a step faltered because of a rock or a thorn or a stumble. When Rin had dared to turn around and peer past Miroku toward Inuyasha who had been holding Saya at the time, she'd received a glare and a growl. It was a low sound from Inuyasha, low and quiet. The monk could not hear it—but she could and so could Saya. The hanyou was communicating his distrust and warning on a frequency that the humans would never be aware of.

Miroku had tried to smile at her, pleasant and patient, never revealing whether he believed that she was who she said she was. She kept in mind that the monk was dangerous to her in a new way she had never had to worry about before: he could purify her. If the monk laid his hands on her, would she die as Sesshomaru or the fox Shippo would? Or would she revert back into a human?

As darkness settled Miroku fell further back, slowing his pace out of caution. In the dark he was nearly blind. Inuyasha, Saya, and now Rin had vision that guided them no matter the condition of the sky.

"When should we stop?" Miroku asked at last, two hours after the sun had set.

"Saya, are you tired?" Inuyasha asked.

Rin slowed, turning her head slightly, listening to the sound of her child's feet brushing the dirt and gravel of the road.

"Only a little," Saya replied. Then she posed a question of her own: "Where are we going?"

Rin stopped and turned around to face them as she answered Saya. "To see your—"

Inuyasha interrupted her with a harsh sound, a full-blown bark. All eyes darted to the hanyou's face as he snapped, "We're just taking a long walk to visit someone." His amber eyes narrowed, glaring wetly at Rin.

Rin frowned, her jaw clenched tightly. She forced her voice to stay low and calm when she spoke. "Am I not allowed to talk to my own daughter, Inuyasha?"

"Feh," he grunted, ears flattening. "You don't know anything do you? What you were gonna say would have upset her. Don't talk about where we're going. None of us believe a word you're saying yet."

"Uncle Inuyasha?" Saya called, a note of uncertainty in her voice, making it tremble.

Miroku intervened, stepped toward the young girl and kneeling to scoop her up into his arms. "Don't worry about them, Saya. Your uncle is just in a bad mood."

"Is it my fault?" Saya asked, whimpering.

"No," Miroku reassured her.

Rin stared after Saya and Miroku. She snatched a brief second when Saya peeked over the monk's shoulder and locked gazes with her. A second later she turned away and clung more tightly to Miroku. Her claws pinched down tight on his robes. "It's the lady's fault, isn't it Monk Miroku?"

Shaking, Rin turned away, crossing her arms over her chest, halfway huddling into herself. She drew in several deep breaths to still the tumult inside. It wouldn't be long before they would see Sesshomaru and know she was telling the truth, but if she tried to forcefully take Saya from them it would do nothing but prove to them that she was lying. Inuyasha would stop at nothing to reclaim his niece if he thought she was in danger and Saya herself doubted Rin's identity.

Rin clawed at her face, lightly scratching it, knowing there would be no marks for the others to see. She felt where the jagged turquoise streaks marked her cheeks, proclaiming to mortals that she was a demon now. She could cover the marks up to hide them from Inuyasha and Saya but it would never convince them of her honesty.

A small, dull sound made her look up with surprise. It was a wing beat, the sound of the songbird flapping its wings as it moved through the trees.

_It was dark._ A songbird should have been roosting. Rin stared into the trees, trying to make out the movement…

And then suddenly alarm shot through her and she stood upright and tense with attention. A sound of claws scrabbling over dirt was fast approaching them—and with it a demonic aura.

"What is it?" Inuyasha growled, catching the way Rin had moved, noting the silent alarm.

Before she could answer, Miroku said: "I sense a demonic aura…"

"Aw shit," Inuyasha cursed. His claws clicked on Tetsusaiga's hilt as he prepared to draw it. "Why does this always happen to—"

"It's the fox," Rin said, catching the faint scent of the approaching youkai. "Shippo."

"She's right," Miroku added, nodding. "It's familiar to me and it's a kitsune."

In the silvered light of the moon, on the stretch of road that curled ahead of them up a small hill, the outline of a fox appeared with its puffy tail lifted high in the air. The fox paused on the crest of the hill where they could see it clearly and moved its tail in a wide circle to make sure he had their attention.

"Definitely Shippo," Inuyasha muttered. "And now that he's here from the Middle Lands we'll see what _he_ has to say about _you,_ Lady Rin." Her title was slurred with derision, filled with Inuyasha's doubt. He had not released Tetsusaiga, Rin's ears would have heard the rustle of his clothing. He was ready to slay her the second Shippo condemned her.

"If he has spoken with Lord Shimofuri," Rin growled, "he will tell you that I am Saya's mother. And you will feel _very_ stupid."

The fox descended the hill, racing for them at top speed. He flitted in and out of sight, teleporting forward as he ran, scaling the distance twice as fast. The last time he winked out of sight was fifty feet in front of them, but he didn't reappear in front of them, instead he popped into existence directly in front of Inuyasha.

The hanyou yelped and stumbled backward. He was cursing the kit even before he had regained his footing. "Dammit Shippo! You stupid runt!"

Shippo stood at their center confidently in his bipedal form. He shook his head, ruffling his red hair, and sniffed loudly, trying to cover his laughter. "I got you that time!"

"Shippo," Rin called, moving forward cautiously.

The kit twisted around at the waist to stare at her. He grinned, exposing his canines, letting them gleam in the moonlight. "Hi there Lady Rin! Sorry I didn't get here in time."

"Have you seen Lord Shimofuri?" Rin asked, a note of desperation creeping into her voice. When Shippo nodded she pressed on with even more vigor, jabbing a finger toward Inuyasha and then at Miroku and Saya, who was hiding behind the monk's robes. "Tell them I'm who I say I am! Tell them I'm telling the truth!"

Unafraid of Rin, Shippo turned with his back toward her to face Inuyasha and Miroku nonchalantly. He shrugged. "I saw Lord Shimofuri and Tsukiyume. They told me you have to trust Rin because she really is who she says she is." He stopped and then started to chuckling mischievously. "That's not even the best part! Inuyasha—" the kit hopped forward energetically and pawed at the hanyou's haori sleeve but Inuyasha, being cranky and unconvinced, pulled it away in a mixture of irritation and alarm.

Shippo blabbered on, uncaring of the looks he was getting from both Inuyasha and Miroku. "They told me that Sesshomaru really is sick! It's like a spell! It made him _human…"_

"How is that possible?" Miroku asked, fascinated at once. "It would have to be powerful magic—perhaps altered miko powers…?"

Shippo shrugged. "Beats me, but he's _human!"_ The kit dissolved into laughter, his green eyes were wet with mirth. "I've been waiting the whole trip to tell you, Inuyasha! You have to go and see it for yourself!"

"Did you see him?" Inuyasha asked after a heavy pause. His expression was dark, his eyes narrowed. He was watching Rin though she had not moved a muscle throughout Shippo's tirade. "Did you see him yourself, Shippo? We can't trust Shimofuri."

"He wasn't lying," Shippo murmured, shaking his head in consternation and still grinning. "You can't make stuff like that up!"

"You didn't see him," Miroku said. It was not a question.

"No, but Jaken was there and he was really upset that Tsukiyume told me about Sesshomaru's _condition,"_ the kit drawled out the last word, snickering gleefully. "I wonder if it turned him into a 300 year old man, you know, since he really is that old. He'd be like Lady Kaede was, all wrinkly and—"

"Shut up," Inuyasha snapped, frowning. "He's fucking older than that anyway." He paused again before his gaze moved to Rin and narrowed. "So Sesshomaru is human and you're inuyoukai?"

Rin nodded slowly. Her hands wrenched and fidgeted in front of her.

No one spoke for several long minutes. Saya poked her head out around Miroku's robes to sneak looks at Inuyasha, Shippo, and at Rin.

Finally Inuyasha's shoulders lost some of their rigidity. He sighed. "Miroku—if Saya wants to go to Rin let her." He lifted his head and pinned Rin with one last glare. "But I want to see Sesshomaru and meet with Shimofuri myself."

* * *

_Miles away, at the edge of the Nanka province in the Middle Lands, a woman dressed in a man's clothing and armor stood at the top of a hill, staring out into the dark. Her hair fluttered in the wind. The hair was white, silvered by the moon. She faced the east with her eyes closed, listening. _

_In the hollows between the hills, rising and falling like frozen ocean waves, was Kanseninu's army of warriors from the Northern Lands. Kitsune that were loyal to him patrolled the land around, yipping in the dark. Most of the warriors were wild youkai, weasels, a few scattered renegade wolves who had been banished or had lost their packs, ogres and monkeys. These were the typical warriors for an army. Very few of them were inuyoukai, but they followed one because inuyoukai made fine leaders, no matter the species they were interacting with. _

_Kanseninu's force had been of a comparable size to Shimofuri and Sasugainu's combined before Jishin had offered her help. Now the army swelled with real warriors and incorporeal beasts, ghosts that could kill the living while remaining untouched themselves. These warriors lingered in the forests to protect themselves from the scattering effect of the wind while they waited for the next advance. The incorporeal monsters were ghosts that Jishin had brought back from the earth, zombies. The older creatures were nothing but spirits, barely visible to the naked eye without the aid of the silvered moonlight which set their vaporous bodies aglow. The recently deceased were gruesome. The stench of decay followed them as they hefted their rotting bodies about. They had once been ogres, wolves, weasels, and monkeys themselves, but now they were slaves to Jishin's power. Even the mindless corpses of insect youkai had risen from their unmarked graves to slither and crawl once more. _

_A centipede youkai hissed in the trees beside the woman on the hill, Jishin. The goddess lifted one hand and said, "Shush." The centipede, little more than an incorporeal ghost, faded and dispersed. Jishin kept her eyes closed, listening. _

_She had tangled with Fate and lost thus far. Her time to strike at Sesshomaru while he was weakest had passed. Now his body would recover with growing speed as DNA fixers and immune cells worked together, snipping out bad segments of genome and copying good ones. Rin had transformed too, a fact that Jishin had not anticipated. A power higher than herself had intervened, performing the same magic on Rin that she had put on Sesshomaru to weaken him, but unlike Sesshomaru, Rin's body would accept the change. She would remain inuyoukai for as long as the higher powers of Fate saw fit. _

_But Jishin had gone too far to stop her conquest now. She could still take the Middle Lands. There was even a chance to destroy Sesshomaru still. He would be weak physically and emotionally, torn in two with a dual nature. _

_Indeed, hanyou would be his undoing. Multiple hanyou. _

_She had left Saya alive out of what she considered to be mercy. The child had been a beautiful work of genes, as all hanyou were. Saya was useless in Jishin's plots and not a threat. Why should Jishin kill the child? Now it proved a wise decision. Saya could be useful after all. And the other hanyou, the infamous Inuyasha? He was bringing Saya and Rin right to Sesshomaru and Shimofuri…_

"_Jishin," a gruff male voice called. _

_Jishin turned her head and opened her eyes. Down the hillside from her was Kanseninu, the inuyoukai that chiefly controlled the Northern Lands. She had used his greed to sweep into the Middle Lands and into the Western Lands, but with Sesshomaru still alive and his infernal mother lurking about as well it seemed more and more unlikely that the most Jishin could do with Kanseninu was to take the Middle Lands. And decimate Sesshomaru's power and confidence. Even his future. _

"_What is it, Lord Kanseninu?" she asked, smiling dryly. _

"_I believe it is time to advance into the Nanka and take it. The first villages will fall easily before us…" His sharp teeth gleamed in the light from the moon. _

"_That's fine. The amulets will protect your warriors. They may not even see battle. The others should lead. It will scare the mortals into easy submission."Jishin lifted one slender wrist and pulled on a small leather cord with a blue stone secured at the end. She tossed it to the inuyoukai and he caught the trinket with one hand and examined it in silence. _

"_That stone gives you the authority to command the dead warriors," Jishin told him. She started to turn away but Kanseninu called her name with alarm. _

"_My lady, you are leaving?" he addressed her awkwardly, aware that she was a goddess. How did one speak to a goddess?_

"_Sesshomaru is still alive. I must incapacitate him."_

"_I thought you had given up all hope of that mission," Kanseninu murmured, frowning. Her failure to remove the powerful leader had cast a shadow of doubt over their campaign. _

"_He is still weak and will remain so during our attack. Your warriors will not encounter him on the battlefield, but another chance to strike at him has presented itself. I must take advantage of it."Jishin lifted her face up toward the moon and fell silent. "I will be at Shimofuri's castle when you arrive, but you may not recognize my form."_

"_My lady…"_

_The whiteness of her hair changed, darkening and then spurting into a bright orange-red. It became fire, hungrily leaping for the trees topping the hill. The centipede demon hissed, reforming in the trees. It slunk away, shirking the light. _

_The brightness made Kanseninu wince, shutting his eyes for only a moment—but when he opened them again the flame was gone, vanished. Only the centipede's hissing remained as it slithered over the ground, leaving no trace because it was incorporeal. Kanseninu clutched the little bracelet with the blue stone on its leather thong and drew a long, silent breath. His army would be invincible. Shimofuri's defeat would be swift._

_

* * *

  
_

Shiroihana left the castle with only a brief word of warning to Shimofuri. She caught him while he was still speaking with Tsukiyume. He had managed to move beyond thoughts of the kitsune from Inuyasha's home and onto a tactical plan when Shiroihana found him and asked to speak with him. She intended to go to the Western Lands and summon as much of Sesshomaru's armies as she could. Shimofuri thought her pessimism—the thought she could not wield her son's armies in his absence because she was _female_—was too constraining. Shiroihana may have been reduced because she was a woman, but her age and lineage would cast away all doubt. He would have argued with her about it, told her to have more hope, but Shiroihana's demeanor spoke of haste and something darker, something that had shaken her.

Before she left Shiroihana revealed what had shaken her. She was standing at the door to the audience hall, taking up the doorway with the white fluff about her shoulders. Her head was lowered, one hand languidly stroked the fluff, but it was too slow and Shimofuri noticed the way her individual fingers shook, digging deep furrows in the fur with each stroke.

"Shimofuri," she began, dropping the formality she had begun their conversation with when she'd first arrived, "I'm afraid that my son has uncovered my plans—and so has your future wife."

"What?" Shimofuri blurted.

Tsukiyume cringed at his side; her ears fell back onto her black hair. "Was it Jaken, Lady Shiroihana?"

"Yes, the little imp came into the room and told them both everything. Ginrei knows of your involvement in this now as well." Her teeth clicked together as she spoke, revealing the depth of her anger. "She has gone to your sister's room."

Shimofuri stifled his urge to groan. He turned to Tsukiyume. "Please, Sister, would you go to her? Can you comfort her?"

Tsukiyume frowned and didn't lift her gaze to meet Shimofuri's. "What am I supposed to tell her?" she asked.

"That hardly matters," Shiroihana sniffed. "The marriage _will_ take place." She wore a hard expression, fierce. The face of a man issuing hard orders, perhaps commanding the death of another.

"Of course," Tsukiyume said, but the agreement was bland, cold.

"I'm leaving now, watch after Ginrei in my absence. Make sure that she does not leave to meet our enemies." Shiroihana's hand closed around the fluff, flattening it, pinching bits of the fur between her fingers. The pink-red slash on her wrist showed as her billowing blue kimono sleeve fell away. "Lord Shimofuri, I will bring the armies of the Western Lands to your aid, starting at Sakaime. I have also sent a fox into the Northern Lands for our mission of _diplomacy_."

Shimofuri nodded to her. "I am indebted to you, Lady Shiroihana."

As soon as Shiroihana's footsteps, which were markedly loud, like a man's, vanished down the hallway, Tsukiyume began speaking in a harsh voice, spitting the words at Shimofuri with sudden anger. "What am I supposed to tell Lady Ginrei? How am I supposed to defend you, Shishi-sama?"

Shimofuri blinked at her, startled by the intensity of her emotion. She had addressed him with the old title that their mother had used to mark him as her heir-apparent, a formally respectful and at once affectionate name. Now Tsukiyume used it with a mocking tone, telling Shimofuri that she was bitterly upset. "Excuse me?"

Tsukiyume's eyes, orange-brown in color, slid to the walls and stayed there. Her brow creased, furrowing above her nose. "You knew about that evil woman's plot. I didn't think you would figure it out, but you did. And when you did you let her go on with it! What were you thinking? What's wrong with you, Brother? Did you just want to see Sesshomaru suffer? Did you just want to steal Lady Ginrei away like she was some kind of…" she shook her head, helplessly. "…trophy?"

Shimofuri scowled and dropped his voice when he answered with his own bitterness. "How could you think that of me, Tsuki? How could you think so little of me?"

"I was ready to tell you everything to get you to stop Shiroihana, even though I thought she might kill me for revealing everything," Tsukiyume spat. "But you put it together yourself and agreed to help her!" She risked looking at him, glaring outright. "I was ashamed of you—and myself…What am I supposed to say to Lady Ginrei?" She bit her lower lip with one canine.

Shimofuri leaned closer to her, nearly whispering. "I agreed to help Shiroihana because I felt she was right about Sesshomaru. He does not appreciate Lady Ginrei. He will toss her away like rubbish now that he knows about Lady Rin's transformation. I knew that if we deceived him it would teach him a lesson _and_ it wouldn't hurt Lady Ginrei as much. She is a good woman, a fine wife, and he has not appreciated her at all. He claimed her ignobly and has made it clear that she is nothing to him but a brood bitch. Lady Ginrei deserves better. I agreed to maintain Lady Shiroihana's ruse because it was the best thing for her."

"Is that what you want me to say to her?" Tsukiyume asked, stiffly. "You were only thinking of her?"

"It's the truth," Shimofuri insisted.

"Is it, Brother?" Tsukiyume demanded. "Were you more interested in harming Sesshomaru? Because of me? Because of the past? My brother was so preoccupied by hate for Lord Sesshomaru that he ignored his wife much in the same way that Lord Sesshomaru ignores Lady Ginrei—but more so."

Shimofuri flinched as if she'd struck him across the face. "You know I didn't mean—Amagumori was our _cousin,_ our _first cousin_ twice over—"

"My brother was so cold to her. He could have befriended Amagumori just a little. While I was with him before Shippo came, Jaken told me that Lord Sesshomaru was thinking of giving Bakusaiga to Lady Ginrei. Would Shishi-sama have done something similar for Amagumori?"

"You're right," Shimofuri bit out, growling. "I was cruel. It was wrong. The marriage was not my choice. It was Uncle's subjugation—I took out my frustration with it on her. Why are you so concerned with this, Tsuki? What does it have to do with Lady Ginrei?"

Tsukiyume's gazed roved over him, searching for a moment. "I need to know—before I go to her and defend you—that you're telling the truth. Do you want Lady Ginrei because you will treat her better and because you think it's right, or do you want her to take out revenge for Sesshomaru's wrongdoings?" She shook her head, rippling the hair on her shoulders. "I can't have it on my conscience, Brother. If you just want her to hurt Lord Sesshomaru _because of me_…"

Shimofuri was silent for a time. His eyes dulled as he turned inward, recalling the little time he had spent with Ginrei. The strength in her face and her hands as she fought to protect Hanone and Sesshomaru, as she'd held Bakusaiga for Sesshomaru. She had fumbled and fidgeted with her hands when they had viewed Amagumori's body before the cremation. Shimofuri had seen and felt her guilt. Enigmatic and alluring, she intrigued him as Amagumori never could have. Was he ready to take Ginrei as his wife because it would wound Sesshomaru, or would he embrace her as an equal, as a wife, a lover, and a mate?

He had never known physical intimacy, but the thought of Ginrei's scent, the heat of her skin beneath her robes, of the hardness of muscle sinew, all of it enthralled him, flushing his body with warmth. He lowered his eyes, drawn out of his thoughts by embarrassment. "Tsuki—partly I have been motivated by the thought of wounding Sesshomaru, yes. But Lady Ginrei—and Amagumori too—they deserve more than they had. I didn't behave as a proper husband at all for Amagumori. I did not even behave as a proper cousin. But for Lady Ginrei…" he stopped, unwilling to go on.

After the silence had dragged on for several minutes Shimofuri glanced up at his sister, frowning with remaining embarrassment. Any words he'd planned to speak to her disappeared when he saw his sister's face. Tsukiyume's lips were set in a small, cautious smile.

"What?" he demanded, barking.

She shook her head, the smile faded slowly. "Nothing, but I'm going to go to Lady Ginrei now. Is that okay?"

Partially dazed, Shimofuri nodded. As Tsukiyume rose to her feet and moved to the sliding door, which was still open from when Shiroihana had come and gone, Shimofuri remembered something. "Tsuki," he called and waited as she twisted her head around to peer back at him. "Please tell her that I would never want to separate her from Hanone. I didn't agree with that part of Shiroihana's plan. Tell her I would be honored to adopt Hanone as my own daughter."

Tsukiyume ducked her head in acknowledgement. "I'll make sure I tell her that."

* * *

The moon was high in its arcing journey across the nighttime sky when Miroku suggested that they stop for a short rest. Saya remained awake in spite of the late hour, clinging to Inuyasha most of the time. When she was tired she asked to be held and the hanyou obliged her. When she wanted down he provided that service too. Miroku offered her drinks from a plastic water bottle that Kagome had filled before they left and Inuyasha carried the bottle she sipped from.

Rin had already known that Inuyasha was a devoted father; she had seen him care for his own children when she had stayed in his household several years previously. Now his attentiveness to her daughter infuriated her and at once filled her with gratitude. Inuyasha had kept Saya safe while she and Sesshomaru were indisposed by Jishin's plot. Hearing Saya's voice, her laughter, gave Rin strength and relief, it helped soothe the emptiness within her, the loss she had carried from the moment the earthquake swallowed Saya and Hanone whole.

Shippo walked beside her, treading through the darkness. The fox and Miroku explained how they had rescued Saya. Rin listened in silence to the tale, imagining what Saya had been through and how the humans could have killed her daughter without Inuyasha and the slayers' intervention. Fate had cared for Saya, bringing family to her rescue.

But would it give Saya back to her now?

The night was warm and humid so the small group didn't bother with a fire. Inuyasha untied his outer haori and draped it over Saya when the child curled up with her head lying on his legs and fell asleep. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared into the darkness with a tense, dark expression on his face. Miroku settled near Inuyasha and Saya, setting his golden staff against one shoulder. The monk, like Saya, fell instantly asleep. Rin heard his even, deep breathing, the slowing heartbeat. With each gentle rise and fall of his chest the golden staff jangled musically, a lulling, beautiful sound.

Shippo stayed awake. He sat closest to Rin, revealing his trust in her. The kit asked her endless questions in a quiet but eager voice. Most of them concerned Sesshomaru. What did he look like as a human? How had the spell worked on him? How had it happened? Rin gave him vague answers or evaded them completely. She was tense, aware that although Inuyasha didn't move and said nothing, he was listening to her every word. He didn't trust her.

"How did you transform into an inuyoukai?" Shippo asked.

Rin kept her face impassive as she searched herself for the answer to that question. The room with the spirit of the dead monk, Tsukiyume's father, the lights of the inuyoukai spirits…

A small sound, a fluttering of feathered wings came from the trees above them. Rin looked up, gasping. "What was that?"

Shippo's tail flicked and he responded without concern. "A bat probably. Maybe a squirrel."

"No it wasn't…" Her eyes flew to Inuyasha but the hanyou's ears had not moved. Had he heard it? Had Shippo?

"Are you all right?" Shippo asked, scooting closer to her. His bright eyes, gleaming wet in the dark, moved over her face.

Rin closed her eyes and turned her head away from him. She drew in a long breath to steady her nerves. _It was nothing, nothing…_

She recalled Shippo's earlier question and tried to answer it hurriedly to distract herself. "I'm not sure what happened, Shippo. I was held prisoner up in the Northern Lands. My spirit was in the realm of the dead."

"You died?" Shippo asked, gasping.

Rin swallowed hard and opened her eyes, staring past Shippo into the darkness beyond him, toward the road through the trees that surrounded their small group. She nodded solemnly. "I-I think I did. When I woke up I was no longer human."

"You couldn't have been dead if you woke up," Shippo said lightly, as if she had made a joke.

"I saw my parents," Rin told him. "They led me through a land without colors. It was the land of the dead. When I woke up the maids that had attended me in the Northern Lands had dressed me in a robe for a funeral."

"Are you _really_ sure you were dead, though?" Shippo asked. "This one time Inuyasha thought Miroku, Sango, and even Kagome were dead too—but they were just sick with a poison and Myoga made them better by draining the poison." He lowered his voice mischievously, "But before they got better Inuyasha held Kagome and cried because he was sure they were all dead."

Rin's eyes flew to Inuyasha but the hanyou had not moved or responded to Shippo's tale. Alarm jumped up inside her. _He does not have that much self-control,_ she thought. He was too close to have missed Shippo's words, even if they were nearly whispered. His head was bowed with his chin resting against his chest. Was he sleeping? Was something wrong…?

Suddenly the darkness behind Inuyasha moved like a swarm of black flies, shifting and changing and flowing. Rin's heart drummed on the inside of her ribs. "Inuyasha! _Saya!_"

Miroku flinched awake at her shouting, snatching his staff. Shippo jumped backward from Rin, turning round to stare at the two hanyou. Even as the monk and the fox gawked, catching the movement of black on black as the incorporeal shape flowed over and around Inuyasha, enveloping him, Rin raced forward. Her movement knocked Shippo over and bumped Miroku into a tree with a grunt.

Rin reached fearlessly into the dark cloud. Her fingers felt a faint dampness as they passed through, nothing else. She gripped Inuyasha's shoulder with one clawed hand and scooped Saya up by the waist with the other. The little girl cried out with alarm, yelping.

As she pulled them out of the dark cloud, Rin felt her head swim, growing thick. A familiar voice echoed in her ears, deep within her mind. _Did you think you were rid of me, Lady Rin?_

Inuyasha slapped away her grip. He coughed as he scrabbled for Tetsusaiga. "What the hell's going on…!"

Rin's eyes stung. She blinked them, becoming aware of her panted breathing, of the warm weight and presence of her daughter in her arms. Saya was sleepy and slow but she clung to her mother with fresh urgency, aware that something was wrong and that if she let go of the inuyoukai woman she would fall.

"We have to run!" Rin yelled. Her back was to the others, she was moving over the ground with more speed than she realized. Saya whimpered against her, murmuring Inuyasha's name.

"Lady Rin!" Shippo shrieked. "Slow down! Stop! There's nothing here! Why are you running?"

"Miroku!" Inuyasha screeched. "Stop her! She has Saya I can't use Tetsusaiga."

"Wait! Don't attack her!" Shippo cried.

Alarmed, Rin stopped and turned. She had reached the open space of the road. In the darkness of the trees she made out Inuyasha's white hair and the shadows of the fox and the monk, but nothing else. The salty scent of tears assaulted her nose. Distracted, Rin glanced at Saya and saw that the girl was shaking, crying silent tears. Her eyes were squeezed shut tightly with terror.

"Saya?" Rin asked, touching her daughter gently, stroking her hair and then feeling her skin. "Saya, baby—why are you crying?" The scent made Rin frown, it consumed her. "Saya—stop crying for me, please? I'm here to protect you."

A light started in the trees, purplish in color. Rin squinted at the sudden brightness and shielded her eyes with one hand. The monk's voice rose up, shouting an attack. Rin had time to shake her head and shout, "No!" then a weight smashed into her legs. She fell heavily, collapsing to the hard gravel and dirt of the road. Saya screamed as they fell.

"Shit! Miroku! Be more careful!" Inuyasha hollered. His footsteps thumped over the ground the moment Rin hit the dirt. Dazed and aware of the heaviness and immobility in her legs, Rin's grip on Saya loosened and the little hanyou slipped free of her mother's grasp. Rin reached for her daughter but Saya was too far away. The tips of Rin's claws brushed the hem of Saya's robe, then she was out of reach.

"Uncle Inuyasha!" she called, crying.

The hanyou picked her up only a few feet from where Rin laid. She wrapped her small arms around him and buried her face in the crook of his neck and his shoulder.

In a puff of air that brushed Rin's cheeks and made her blink, Shippo popped up in front of her. "Why did you do that?" he asked, perplexed.

"I told you we couldn't fucking trust her!" Inuyasha shouted, growling.

Miroku arrived and stood over Rin, breathing the hardest of all of them. He had used a sutra charm, propelling it after Rin. It restrained her, paralyzing her legs. "Inuyasha," he panted. "I think she saw something. I do believe she really is Lady Rin…"

"Yeah—I _told_ you she was…"

"Let me go!" Rin shouted, her voice shaking with something that bordered on hysteria. "We have to get away from here! Jishin has come…" She twisted around, maneuvering her lame legs awkwardly, gnashing her teeth with determination. She stared at Inuyasha where he held her daughter, stroking the girl's hair much as Rin had done moments ago. "You have to protect Saya! Jishin is here! Jishin was going to take her—please, run. Run!"

"Jishin?" Miroku repeated, blinking. "Goddess of destruction?"

"Get out of here!" Rin cried.

"There's nothing here," Inuyasha growled. "Quit scaring everyone."

A voice that they all recognized spoke up then from just behind them: "Yes, Little Brother."

The monk, the hanyou and the fox turned as one and gaped at the figure standing just at the edge of the forest, half in shadow and half illuminated by the silver moonlight. It was tall and stately in its elegance. Long white hair flowed behind it. Armor glinted, bristling with sharp spikes. The eyes reflected light like a feral animal's, like a cat's in dull light. It was a fully demonic Sesshomaru in full battle regalia.

Inuyasha took an involuntary step backward, barely restraining a gasp. _He looks like he did when…_On the night when Sesshomaru had swept into Inuyasha's home and threatened to kill Koinu, the inuyoukai lord had been dressed in the same way with his armor and his long hair tied behind him, like Inutaisho had in days of old.

"Sesshomaru?" Inuyasha asked, barely breathing the name. Saya stirred in his arms, lifting her head. Her golden eyes sprang wide open with shock—then her face came alive with joy.

"Daddy! Daddy!" In her excitement she forgot any use of formality. She stretched out one arm, pawing at the distant figure of her father at the edge of the trees.

"It's not him!" Rin screamed, frantically. "It's _her!"_

"Indeed," the figure said, smiling coldly. Before anyone could react Jishin rushed forward, streaking with speed. Inuyasha, the monk, and the kit scattered, breaking away from one another in uncertainty and fear at the suddenness of the attack. Jishin had only one interest, exactly as Rin had feared. Her target was Saya.

"Run!" Rin screamed, struggling on the ground. When she saw Miroku nearby she called to him, "Please! Let me up!" He responded swiftly, kneeling and reaching for the sutra that still glowed purple, restraining her legs.

Inuyasha let out a strangled cry. Jishin had snatched him up by the neck in Sesshomaru's form and heaved him up off the ground. Saya held onto his shoulders and wrapped her legs around his waist. She screamed and babbled wildly in confusion and fear.

"Jishin!" Rin screamed. "Leave them alone, you bitch!"

Inuyasha clawed at Jishin-Sesshomaru's wrist with both hands, releasing Saya though the little girl didn't fall, holding on with all of her strength, without any help from her uncle. Inuyasha's claws passed through the apparition's wrist with each swing. The hanyou gurgled sickeningly, losing air and giving in to desperation. His thoughts frayed as his oxygen need increased with his panic.

Sesshomaru grinned, a bizarre, sickening expression on the inuyoukai. With the hand that wasn't holding Inuyasha the apparition snatched hold of Saya's arm. It pulled, tugging viciously. Saya cried in her high, keening voice. Jishin pulled niece and uncle apart, tossing Inuyasha carelessly through the air, across the road. The hanyou landed heavily, rolling through the dust and crashing into a tree on the other side of the road.

Held over the ground with nothing to cling to, Saya kicked and screamed, flailing like a fish caught on a line.

"Anyone move and the little hanyou dies." Sesshomaru's lips moved, but the voice that emerged was deep and female.

Rin, freed finally of Miroku's spell, clawed at the dirt around her feet. "Jishin!" she screeched. "What do you want? I'll do anything—just don't hurt Saya!" She bared her teeth, her body shook. Miroku held onto her with one hand, as if trying to hold her back.

"How fortunate that you would suggest that so quickly!" Jishin laughed. She brought Saya closer to her, tucking the child into the crook of her elbow. Saya whimpered and squirmed but her attacks, every slash with her clawed hands, left no trace. At times her fingertips passed right through the pale skin of the arm holding her or the familiar whiteness of his kimono.

Shippo had teleported to where Inuyasha had landed, calling the hanyou's name. The fox's tail bristled as if he'd been electrified. His voice was high, filled with fear. "Inuyasha! Inuyasha! Wake up!"

"Fear not, fox," Jishin said. "He lives. I have always enjoyed hanyou. It would truly be a shame if I had to slaughter one of them." With what appeared to be Sesshomaru's hands, Jishin fondled Saya's hair and tugged gently on the girl's rounded, human ears. Saya stilled when she felt the apparition's touch, stiffening. "Make no mistake, Lady Rin. I will kill your child…" she lifted her eyes, golden with red in the center, narrowed on where Miroku and Rin stood together, tense and ready to attack the moment an opportunity presented itself.

Sesshomaru-Jishin's head cocked to one side, the smile increased. "I have little fondness for humans however—and the monk's Fate…" Her free hand twitched at her side. She lifted it, pointing a finger toward Miroku.

Rin darted in front of Miroku, shielding him. "What do you want, Jishin?" she demanded. "Leave them alone and _let Saya go!"_

Jishin's f ace twisted with irritation. Her hand changed shape, making a grabbing motion. "Get out of my way!"

Rin felt pressure close over her body. She struggled, kicking, but it was useless. Her mind spun, the world flew around her. She heard herself scream but wasn't aware of doing it. She landed hard in the grass and rolled as Inuyasha had, colliding with a tree. Bark fell around her, the wood cracked and splintered. The tree groaned and began to fall. Rin screeched, curling instinctively into a ball and sheltering her head. The trunk did not fall on Rin but the mass of the tree obscured her from view and stunned her. Dust clogged her nose and stung in her eyes.

Shippo winked out of sight as Jishin turned her attention back to Miroku. By the time she was facing the monk again the kit stood in her way. He had transformed his shape into Sesshomaru's likeness as well to make sure that he was tall enough to shield Miroku.

"Miroku—Run!" Sesshomaru's lips shouted with Shippo's boyish voice.

"I tire of tossing you fools around!" Jishin growled. She made the same fist that she had used on Rin but then, suddenly a white light flared up around her. Jishin yelped with surprise, but the cries changed into alarm and pain a fraction of a second later.

"Is it Inuyasha?" Miroku asked, trying to step forward. The light seemed similar to Tetsusaiga's wind scar, but the monk hadn't seen the hanyou move and hadn't heard him shout the attack. Also the wind scar made a lot of noise, this light had arrived silently.

Shippo pivoted, locking Miroku. "Stay behind me!"

The light cut through the dark, so bright that it turned night into day, competing with the moon and the stars. Jishin fell backward, stumbling. She dropped something Saya's size, but it glittered white hot, like a miniaturized sun. As Jishin backpedaled, staggering out of the clear road, the light moved with her, seeming to emanate from her for a moment before it changed, dulling and falling in bizarre drips from her limbs and her body. Her shape changed under the light, shrinking down to the stature of a human woman.

She collapsed onto her hands and knees. The light dripped away from her, splashing onto the ground and fading into the darkness. Jishin's cries of pain ended. Instead the night filled with the sounds of her harsh breathing. As the light faded and cleared from her form, Shippo and Miroku saw that she had dropped Sesshomaru's appearance. Now she looked like a small woman, no bigger than Rin had been as a human. Her shoulders heaved with effort.

The white-glowing shape she had dropped lost its brilliance suddenly, as abrupt as the flick of a light switch. Saya was sitting in its place, shaking. One hand was closed in a tight fist. A small white glow emanated from it, the source of the power that had freed her from Jishin's grasp.

"Fix magic," Shippo said, gaping. "The white light feels like fox magic."

"What has it done to her?" Miroku asked, looking at Jishin. The goddess had not yet gotten to her feet, in fact she appeared to be weakening further.

The tree that had pinned Rin down moved, jostling as she struggled under it, pushing. The tree moved easily for her, thought it would have been impossible for her to move it as a human. She climbed out from under it and hurried forward, breathing hard but strong, unhurt. She either didn't care or didn't notice the white light as she scooped Saya up into her arms, holding the child close to her.

Jishin collapsed, but her body disappeared, splintering into a million tiny particles and fading into the darkness. Miroku and Shippo gasped with surprise and relief. "She's gone!" Shippo announced merrily.

"No," Rin said, shaking her head fiercely. "It isn't over yet." She turned her head and looked to where Inuyasha was lying on the ground, unmoving. "We need to hurry away from here. We have to get to Lord Shimofuri's lands."

"How can you be certain that she isn't dead?" Miroku asked, perplexed.

"She's a goddess," Rin snapped. "You can't kill a goddess. She comes and goes as she pleases."

"But the light—what was it? If felt like fox magic to me, but…"

Rin interrupted Shippo, shaking her head. "I don't know." She moved Saya in her arms, gazing at the little girl. The child was limp with weakness. Rin made a small noise of fear as she saw her daughter's floppy arms, her drooping eyelids. Saya's body was shaking faintly in her arms but the few tears that had escaped her eyes were long since dried. "Baby," Rin murmured, half-cooing. She touched Saya's face, patting her cheeks. "Talk to me…"

She found one of Saya's hands closed tightly in a fist and lifted it, prying gently at the fingers. Saya opened her hand and a white shape fell out, still gleaming in the darkness. It fell to the ground and clattered over the gravel. As soon as it settled on the dirt the shape darkened. In the blackness Rin saw a white stone and with a flash of insight she remembered Aojiroi Jinsoku the fox, his smile as he had handed over a white stone, a gift. She recalled her own hesitance, her fear…

_Fox magic…_

"We need to go," Rin announced. She motioned toward Inuyasha. "Get him, wake him up."

Miroku sprinted to do as she ordered.

While Shippo watched, unwilling to let go of the mysterious white light, Rin knelt and picked up the white stone, clutching it in her own palm. It felt warm and smooth and it began to tingle in her grasp, responding to her demonic power with something like enthusiasm. Rin tucked it inside her obi and repositioned Saya on her shoulder as Miroku called from the other side of the road. "Inuyasha's awake now."

Rin nodded and glanced to Shippo. The fox's green eyes were fixed on her knowingly. "Good," she said. "Let's go."

* * *

_Should have like split this into two chapters, but I knew I didn't want to leave that kind of cliffhanger again, like I did when Koinu was stuck in Sess's arms in Runaway. Oi...until next time!_


	31. Jishin's Bargain

A/N: My wisdom teeth are GONE. The surgery was more traumatic than I expected actually. With my sister the oral surgeon, same dude that saw me, gave her an IV of valium, versaid, and Demerol. Valium makes you happy of course. Versaid makes the memory patchy so that the experience flies by (literally 45 mins is 5), and Demerol plus Novocain shots in the gums destroys the pain. He didn't give me valium like he gave to my sister, so I was already scared out of my mind and then the other drugs made my body all slow and groggy but the fear and anxiety remained. And I _remember_ the surgery, in mostly linear fragments. They told me to breathe through my mouth or my nose or something and then scolded me saying I was "scaring the other patients." That was all during the surgery I think. I was hyperventilating throughout the whole thing, making these really unladylike snorts because I was terrified. Give me valium!! I'm a wimp!! Anyway, gotta stop typing about it because it makes my leftover incisions ache…but anyway, I had some complications so my leave has been more extended than I would have liked. Delayed healing on the left side that made my pain level leap from 4 (on a scale of 1-10 with 10 making you pass out) the first two recovery days up to 7 on days 3 and 4. It's still sensitive and I can't chew well…I lost 2 pounds…anyway…enough whining…

Disclaimer: I do not own them.

Last Chapter: Jishin showed up and attacked IY, Miroku, Shippo, Saya, and Rin. But when she was holding Saya a white light came up and forced her to release Saya. Saya was left unconscious but Jishin vanished, leaving them alone for a time. Shimo and Tsuki discussed what to say to Ginrei. Tsuki was angry with her brother for cooperating with Shiroihana's plan. Jishin and Kanseninu from the north have accumulated an army of bad guys and unbeatable dead bad guys and they are moving against Shimo. Shiroihana left to get what she could of the Western Land's armies to help defend Shimofuri's land.

**Jishin's Bargain**

**

* * *

**The rising sun found Rin leading the monk and the weary hanyou. Inuyasha's gait was slightly uneven with a limp, acquired when Jishin had thrown him some twenty or thirty feet across the road. Miroku's staff jangled, singing in Rin's ears like the birds, while Saya's breath puffed minutely against her neck.

They began to pass humans on the road. The men and women, travelers, messengers, warriors, merchants, and farmers hugged the opposite side of the road. If they had animals with them they held them down or back and stared uncomprehendingly at the threesome of adults and sleeping child. Their attention focused on Inuyasha and Saya because they were the most out of the ordinary in appearance. The monk was normal and Rin at first glance was just an abnormally tall, lanky woman. If they took a moment longer to examine her they would see the marks on her cheeks and the backs of her palms. They would realize that their oxen and horses huffed and whinnied with fright not because of Inuyasha or Saya necessarily, but because of Rin. She carried the scent of a predator with the mind still of a human woman.

The increase in people made Rin's heart pick up with excitement and hope. They were entering the Nanka, moving toward the castle town. Rice paddies opened up before them with human workers bent double in them, extracting weeds and clearing the irrigation channels. Their sunhats bobbed up and down as they worked.

Once upon a time, ages distant it seemed, Rin had played while her mother and father worked in fields that were nearly identical to the ones she now passed through with her own small daughter in her arms. She thought of them in the shadow world, the place where color drained and sensation dulled, becoming only cold. She prayed they could keep Jishin at bay long enough for her to reach Shimofuri's castle…

* * *

In his room, hidden away, Sesshomaru could not rest behind his protective screen. Jaken waited on the other side, always ready to accept his indisposed lord's commands. Sesshomaru could not find sleep. It was a new thing to him, needing to fall into the strange blackness and oblivion. It frightened him.

He watched the screened window as the sun rose, coloring it gold, brightening his gloomy, sheltered corner. His blankets were rich furs, but they had begun to smell to him, distinctly unwashed. At first he'd thought he'd imagined the scent, but gradually it increased until it bothered him enough that it had started a pain in his head.

The deep-seated pain in his ribs, arms, and legs had dulled, becoming steadily more tolerable. Hunger stirred as the sun climbed slightly. Sesshomaru sat up, giving in to his body's unpredictable demands.

"Jaken," he called.

"Yes, my lord?"

"Fetch me something to eat." He closed his eyes against the glow of the sunlight on the screen over the window.

"What do you want, Lord Sesshomaru?" Jaken asked squawking with eagerness.

Sesshomaru paused, uncertain. In the previous days he'd spent as a mortal he had been shoveling into his mouth sticky rice, cooked and seasoned fish, everything that he had ever seen Rin eat at dinner with him. It had all tasted delicious. He had not experienced such ravenous hunger since his time as a small pup when he could recall digging out insects and spiders on a journey with his parents. He had seen his mother's mixed amusement and disgust and could still imagine the slapping motions she'd made to flick away the dirt.

Remembering his mother carved a fierce scowl on his face though no one could see it. "I do not care what you bring," he told Jaken impatiently.

"I'll return as fast as I can, my lord!" Jaken's footsteps left the room, pattering over the floor.

Alone, Sesshomaru lowered his head tiredly and let out a sigh. He missed Ginrei and Hanone's presence in the room. They were better company than Jaken, near-equals to himself rather than mere servants as the imp was. He was grateful to Jaken for revealing his mother's treachery, but the impact it had had on Ginrei disturbed him. He had received no word on her location or wellbeing since she had taken Hanone and left him and the room behind.

Holding his breath to stop himself from making a sound, Sesshomaru pushed upwards with his arms, forcing his stringy, weak legs underneath him. The muscles wobbled and quivered, weakened by lack of use. He gritted his teeth as he stood up and lurched unsteadily to the screen on the window. Sesshomaru brushed the rough paper of the screen, tracing faint silver and gold lines. His eyes had blurred again, making the lines unclear.

Frustrated by his body's continued failings, Sesshomaru rubbed his face with both hands.

After he had eaten he would ask Jaken to call on a maid to bring in a mirror. He would fight through the weakness, discomfort, and pain. Sometimes rest was not the key to healing. Sometimes one had to get up and fight.

* * *

During the night kitsune messengers loyal to Shimofuri had arrived with word that a vast, unnatural army had swept through the outer regions of the Nanka. They were only a matter of hours away from Shimofuri's castle and closing in fast. The human battlements and villages between Shimofuri's castle and the Nanka's border to the north hadn't been able to affect any defense or resistance to the advancing army at all. The dead numbered in untold, astonishing amounts.

One of the kitsune, frightened of what she'd seen, described them as _ghosts._ _They passed through the villages like water, bowling over the living…_

As Shimofuri called for his armor, he could see the mood of the foxes: they believed he was as good as dead already.

Shimofuri ignored them and left his castle behind. In the hills and woods surrounding the town Shimofuri gathered his troops, coming to them in his true form for extra speed. Unlike Kanseninu's army, Shimofuri employed many humans into his midst, a tradition that his mother had started centuries before. Samurai lined his ranks with stony faces while a regiment of youkai warriors waited in the shadows of the trees.

He outlined his plans to the humans first before moving to the youkai warriors. He didn't explain in detail the dire news of the foxes, but gave his troops hope by telling them that he had a plan and support was indeed coming from the Western Lands.

One of the youkai, a cat with a missing ear and golden eyes that were only a shade darker than Sesshomaru's, challenged Shimofuri's news, shouting, "The Lord of the Western Lands is missing! He's dead!"

The other youkai shifted, mumbling in dissention.

Shimofuri cursed the speed that rumors traveled with. He faced the cat and lowered his voice into a deep, commanding bass. "Who are you to call me a liar, cat?"

"I live in Sakaime," the cat said in a hiss. Sakaime was the border town between the Nanka and the Western Lands. "The word there is that Sesshomaru is dead. He has no heirs. The Western Lands are lawless now. Why fight for the Nanka when you can take the whole of the Western Lands, Lord Shimofuri?"

While the cat chuckled, Shimofuri strode toward him, drawing his sword with a slick metallic sound. "Lord Sesshomaru lives and he is my ally. The armies of the Western Lands are coming to protect the castle." He turned and regarded the rest of the youkai, narrowing his blue eyes critically. "I will be frank. We are too few to defeat this army. It is not a traditional fight. I ask only that you face them, stall them if you can, then we must flee. Our advance is only for show and for time."

"What are we waiting for?" a young voice called, quivering nervously.

Shimofuri hesitated, uncertain whether or not to reveal that their help was primarily coming from a woman. How well had Shiroihana's name traveled? Would they know of her as an elder of the clan, as Inutaisho's crafty, proud, manipulative wife?

Finally he said, "We are waiting for Lady Shiroihana."

He was surprised when the youkai reacted with shock. They murmured Shiroihana's name with excitement and spread it amongst one another. Shimofuri spotted relief in their faces. They knew the battle would be won with brains, not brawn.

"You're content then?" Shimofuri demanded loudly. The troops answered him with a roaring cry of their own in the affirmative. Shimofuri nodded sternly, more to himself than to the warriors. He hoped that his warriors would buy Shiroihana the time she needed.

* * *

Shippo traveled parallel to Rin, Inuyasha, Miroku, and Saya. When the trees were close to the road he was within sight, a seemingly normal fox, romping along the road. Humans took little note of him when they saw him, a fact that Shippo took great pride in. Although his true form was that of a large fox, appearing like any other wild animal, the exact details were mimicked with magic. The smaller size, the clumped and dirtied fur, the uneven coloration, and little behavioral changes like skittishly avoiding humans or their dogs.

When the lands they passed through became more cultivated, meaning that the area around the road was clear of trees and brush, Shippo took the long way around, following the trees while the others stayed on the road. As they approached the Nanka and Shimofuri's castle, Shippo found following the tree line became harder. He fought to keep pace with the others, to keep track of their progress. Sometimes he caught sight of them far ahead and ran across their scents from the edge of the road. Other times he waited for long minutes at a time for them to catch up, watching the humans pass by with their animals spooking at his scent.

The sun had not reached its zenith during one of Shippo's long forays through the forest surrounding the village and the road. The villages and their crop fields and rice paddies had been nearly continuous for miles since nearly daybreak. Soon Shippo would have to choose a different disguise and walk along with the others.

At the edge of one crop field, full and abloom, lush and green, Shippo stopped. The sun slanted through the trees behind and to his right, covering the forest floor in dappled light and shadow. Camouflaged by his surroundings, Shippo risked breaking with what humans would have expected from normal wild fox behavior and jumped into a tree. With paws that adapted to what he was doing, growing out the dew claw into an opposable thumb, Shippo hauled himself higher up until he could peer out over the crop field to the road beyond it, searching for the others.

Taken with the task, the kit didn't notice the prickling sensation in his fur, or the fluttering, shifting shadow that came with it until it was too late.

He lifted his head, blinking with confusion, and then felt something solid smash into him in the same moment that darkness swept over his face like a blindfold. With a coughing-cry like a wild fox, Shippo fell from the tree. He landed hard, unable to catch himself. His fur rippled and his skin itched. As Shippo opened his eyes and shook his head, he wondered with stiff fear whether a swarm of black flies had found him—or if it was something worse. He pawed at his eyes and tried to transform into his boyish shape, but his inner power stayed silent, withdrawn as if shy.

The prickling in his skin changed into needling pain. Shippo yipped with pain and lunged on wobbly, elongated legs, out of the dappled forest's light and into the sunny space of the crop field. At the edge of the crop field there was a small mound of loose, tilled soil. Shippo dove into it and wriggled, trying to dislodge his mysterious, shadowy attacker.

He rolled for some time but the sensation did not dissipate. Shippo felt the dirt underneath him, cool in spite of the sunlight, the soothing itch of the granules of earth. At last, fatigued, Shippo stopped and closed his eyes, breathing deeply and trying to think. In that position he became aware that he was not alone.

When Shippo opened his eyes he found himself staring at five human toes, small and childlike. Slowly he panned his gaze upward and saw with shock the form of a naked child. She was not human—she had bright pink hair, like fresh cherry blossoms. Shippo twitched, trying to move, but the painful prickling in his fur had muddled the nerve impulses, partly paralyzing him.

The girl knelt to be closer to him. Her pink hair lengthened as she did so, flowing into her lap and curling, then slipping off to pool at her sides. Her body was shapeless, untouched by puberty, but her face was soft and gentle. Shippo's legs and paws twitched, fighting the unseen restraint. He pleaded her with his green eyes and she smiled as she extended her hand in a slow, gentle movement.

Her hand smoothed the fur on his head and brushed the outline of his ears. "Don't worry, little Shippo," she said. "I promise—if you don't fight too much—this won't hurt."

* * *

When the maids came with the mirror, Sesshomaru peered into it and saw his changed face for the first time. His nose had broadened at the end; his lips had become less prominent. The perfect curve of his chin and face had altered, showing a softness that Sesshomaru immediately disdained. He turned his eyes—a light brown color now—away from the face in the mirror, looking past it toward the screen over the window again. He clenched the muscles in his jaw and concentrated on the lightening color of the sunshine that touched the window screen.

The servants paraded in shyly, unwilling to look at him, a fact that Sesshomaru was grateful for. They brought his old robes, cleaned and fresh. The armor was bright and shiny and sharp. Sesshomaru posed while a maid and a specially trained male-servant moved around him, dressing him, tying sashes and obis, securing armor, and adjusting the fabric to remove wrinkles. Sesshomaru tolerated their presence by closing his eyes, willing himself to exist somewhere else.

A black wig came for him, made of real human hair. Sesshomaru picked out the human scent on the thing, faintly sweet. The ancient scent of a woman that had sheared away her hair for money for the benefit of some actor. As it was secured to his scalp and combed, Sesshomaru felt revulsion curdling in his stomach. His form in the mirror was wrong, weak. His shoulders had shrunken, sloping downward. The armor looked feeble in its altered position. Jaken had placed Bakusaiga at his feet in its sheath, but Sesshomaru could barely feel the aura of the sword.

As the dresser and the maid finished, backing away to bow low before him, Sesshomaru flicked his eyes once to his reflection and then looked away, too disgusted to examine it any further.

"My lord," Jaken said in a timid voice.

"What is it?" Sesshomaru asked, nearly snapping.

Jaken cringed slightly and bowed to appease the lord. "Perhaps I might suggest something if the work displeases you…?"

Sesshomaru stayed silent, his gaze unfocused, his mind fuzzy.

"Perhaps start smaller, my lord? The armor is too much for you just yet, too great a load. My lord must recover further! It won't be long now I'm sure! The hair has begun to change color!"

Gradually, Sesshomaru looked at the imp. There was a long silence before he asked, "What do you mean?"

Jaken bowed down low and mumbled to himself with uncertainty before explaining, "The hair on my lord's head. It was black, but now it is white."

Surprised, Sesshomaru blinked and lifted one blunt-tipped set of fingers to tentatively brush over his cheeks. Human stubble had coated it only a short time ago. Now his fingers found no resistance. His vision was blurry, but Sesshomaru glanced to the bedding where he had slept, where his head had lain. It had been gritty when he woke. Had the bristles of human hair fallen out while he dozed?

He lowered his hand from his face and addressed Jaken. "Bring my mother."

"She isn't here!" Jaken exclaimed. "She left some time ago."

Sesshomaru's lips thinned with irritation. He had hoped that Shiroihana would come to examine him like a physician and tell him whether he had recovered even slightly. Surely his own mother would be able to judge his scent as it changed. He had ordered Shiroihana to leave him in anger, but he hadn't thought that she really would abandon him. He pushed those thoughts aside. "Bring Ginrei then."

Jaken gulped and clicked his claws together in a nervous motion. "My lord—she is with the hanyou girl. Do you think it wise to send for her when Lady Rin is—"

"I am ready to speak with her. It must be done. You will bring her to me. The hanyou girl may come as well if Ginrei prefers it." There were as many as three reasons why Sesshomaru wanted to see his soon-to-be ex-wife. One was very selfish. Ginrei would be able to assess his health better than Jaken or any human. They had been intimate with one another once; it would be bearable for Ginrei to examine him while a different physician would only irritate Sesshomaru and insult him. The other reasons why it seemed vital to speak with Ginrei were simple. He wanted to reassure her that Shiroihana had exploited them both, not just her. And he wanted to see Hanone, his only pureblooded child, before she was taken away from him. He wanted to look into her small, young face and see his own features—features he couldn't see in the mirror at the moment.

"I will do as you say," Jaken agreed, bowing. When he rose out of it he made a hissing sound at the waiting servants, pushing them out of the little alcove that Sesshomaru's protective screen created. They exited with such speed that Sesshomaru didn't remember to call to them to order them to take the wretched silvered mirror with them.

Alone with the reflective surface, Sesshomaru reached shakily for it and turned it to the wall, hiding his own face from view.

* * *

"Is Saya awake yet?" Inuyasha asked irritably. He was behind Rin, walking near Miroku. Rin made out the small shuffle in his gait, the scratch of dirt and the swish of his pants.

"No," Rin answered, sighing. It was the third or fourth time Inuyasha had asked about the girl in her arms, as insistently as though he were Saya's watchful father himself. Yet Sesshomaru would have probably restrained his questions and simply taken Saya in his own hold to be sure—or he would have trusted Rin to take care of their daughter herself. Inuyasha knew no such trust.

Rin had carried Saya's limp form for hours. If she had been human she would have had to stop and rest. Her arms would have ached, her shoulders would have bent. As an inuyoukai the strain was minor at worst. Saya's weight didn't bother her in the least. The girl's face quivered slightly as she slept, wrinkling in the brow region. Her white hair fell over Rin's sleeves, silky as it moved in the breeze. One of Saya's arms flopped with each of Rin's steps. Saya's bare feet, covered with dust, bounced at Rin's side.

"Are you sure she's okay?" Inuyasha demanded.

"I know my own child, Inuyasha," Rin said, projecting confidence that she didn't truly feel. Saya had stayed awake most of the journey, so it was right for the child to sleep, but this was not a natural sleep. Rin suspected the stone was to blame, but her thoughts also turned, darkly, to the encounter with Jishin. Had Jishin sent Saya into the underworld, the shadow realm, the same way that she had done to Rin? If Saya's soul stayed there long enough she would surely die.

"I do feel it is unusual for her to sleep for so long while we're traveling," Miroku observed. "Is she a heavy sleeper, Inuyasha?"

"Fuck no!"

Rin tightened her jaw, suppressing her annoyance. Inuyasha's protectiveness over Saya needled her emotions, mingling with her growing worry. _I have seen Saya sleep heavily before. Heavy as a stone. _But thinking that made her remember the mysterious white light that had banished Jishin and enveloped Saya—the white stone.

She tilted Saya's body, maneuvering her child until she could touch the girl's face. The dirt streaked cheek, the childish roundness of her face. Rin licked her finger and gently brushed at the dirt, tenderly cleaning her daughter's cheek.

The road was empty as the sun neared its zenith. They passed several travelers that had stopped to eat. Rin glanced back at her companions and didn't miss the way they stared at the eating humans intently, thinking about food, but no one suggested that they stop and Rin pressed on hurriedly.

Afternoon summer insects shrilled as they entered a long open stretch of the road, sandwiched between two long crop fields. Halfway in the cadence of Miroku's staff changed.

Inuyasha asked, "What is it?"

"A demonic aura." The monk had stopped, the sound of his sandals had ceased.

Rin turned from the waist, letting her feet continue the journey. "We can't stop—hurry…"

Inuyasha growled, glaring. "Demonic auras usually mean stop and pay attention."

Rin let her footsteps slow, using her bizarre new senses to flow into her. Something hung in the back of her mind, a sense that was not hearing or sight or scent. Before she had even thought about it, Rin knew the demon they were sensing was only a fox. "It's Shippo," she said. "Let's go on."

"No," Miroku said, shaking his head with a frown. "I recognize Shippo's aura. This is…" his frown deepened. "Different."

"We can't stop…" Rin let the words fade when she heard and sensed the kitsune behind her. She turned and backpedaled to be closer to Inuyasha and the monk. Her grasp wrenched down on Saya, clutching her close.

The shape stepped out of the crop field, a dark shape against the bright, healthy green. It lifted its puffy tail up and down, moving with a slow, deliberate gait. The three adults stared with shock as they recognized the tail movements that the fox made as signals Shippo used to identify himself to them. The fox's fur was dirty, when he flicked his tail a halo of dust remained. His nostrils flared and he snorted repeatedly, like a bull about to charge.

"Shippo?" Miroku called out, hesitantly.

In the middle of the road, blocking their path, Shippo sat down and at last lifted his head. The eyes were not green. They were a bright red like freshly shed blood.

"Oh fuck this," Inuyasha snarled. "Miroku, can you get rid of whatever's possessed him?"

The monk was already reaching inside his robes, his fingers digging greedily. "I have a few ideas…"

"It's Jishin," Rin said. Her shoulders began to shake. "You can't purify a goddess."

Shippo's jaw fell open in a wet wolfish smile. His pink tongue lolled. Rin spotted marks where Shippo's tongue was bleeding, punctured by his own teeth. When the kit began speaking the voice was normal, the young, energetic boy they had always known. "It doesn't have to be difficult for any of you."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Inuyasha blustered. His hand moved to Tetsusaiga and drew it with a grinding sound of metal on metal. The sword transformed and lifted past Rin's side, a little too close for comfort. She took a step back, closer to Miroku, giving the hanyou room to work the deadly, legendary fang.

"Inuyasha—remember this _is_ Shippo," Miroku cautioned. He held several sutras between his fingers, ready for use. Rin saw purification spells, anti-magic spells, and exorcism spells written in the inked characters.

"Yeah," Shippo peeped. "You can't hurt me, Inuyasha." His tail thumped on the ground beside him, as if impatient. "We should conclude this before someone else stumbles on us. It would be really embarrassing. Lady Rin—you can keep them all safe if you just give me what I want."

"No," Rin bit out, baring her teeth. She shifted Saya, pulling her into her chest and wrapping both arms around the sleeping, limp weight of her daughter. "I won't let you have her."

Shippo tilted his head to one side and his mouth opened wider with amusement. The red eyes narrowed. "I didn't come for Saya. I came for you, Lady Rin. But if you do not turn yourself over to me, I'm afraid I'll have to kill the hanyou. First Inuyasha. Then Saya."

"What the hell," Inuyasha yelled. His ears flattened. "How are we supposed to fucking deal with this? Shippo—this had better be a joke."

Rin took a step forward though Miroku reached out and held her arm above the elbow, trying to keep her back. "Lady Rin, please, you cannot trust it."

She ignored him and kept her eyes glued to the fox that had once been such a relief to see on the horizon. "Jishin," she called, "what do you want with me?"

"You are the only one now that I can use," Shippo-Jishin said, the voice lowering into a stern, bitter sound. "No one will be able to kill you, least of all _him._"

"You better start making some fucking sense soon or I'll blast your ass right out of Shippo!"

"Hush, Inuyasha," Shippo said, tossing the hanyou a short, unmistakably amused glare.

"_Hush?"_ Inuyasha lowered Tetsusaiga and lifted one fist, fighting the old urge to bop the kit over the head. It was a challenge to overcome the sight of the kit sitting in front of them, taunting them. There had been times when Shippo played games with them and partly Inuyasha wondered if this was some kind of sick joke. Aside from the changed eye color, Shippo seemed normal. Only his aura and his eyes were different, and because Shippo was a shape-shifter even that was open to doubt. "You little runt!"

Miroku released Rin to hold onto Inuyasha, restraining the hanyou. With her arm free, Rin took another step away from Inuyasha and Miroku. She raised her voice, shouting, "If I turn myself over to you, Jishin, you swear that you'd let the fox go and wouldn't harm anyone else?"

"I have no reason to harm any of them," Jishin replied, smiling with Shippo's mouth. His shape began to waver, changing before their eyes. The fox shuddered and a fine layer of dust flew from his fur, taking with it the kitsune's shape. In its place a small girl stood in a simple child's kimono in an orange checkered pattern. It was the kimono that Rin had worn in her childhood, faithfully following Sesshomaru. The child wore Rin's face as well, except that her hair was pink and her eyes were Shippo's brilliant green.

"That ain't Shippo," Inuyasha growled, lifting Tetsusaiga. The fang gleamed, ready to strike.

"Don't," Rin cried in exasperation. "Look into the eyes, Inuyasha."

The hanyou bristled but didn't attack.

"You have no choice, Lady Rin," Jishin said, smiling coldly. "Give Saya to them and stay with me." The smile widened, showing the fox's small, needlelike fangs. "It won't take us very long."

"The hell it will," Inuyasha snapped. "Take her down, Miroku!"

Miroku darted forward and threw the sutras at the shape of the girl with pink hair. They impacted on her shoulder and the girl stepped backward, stumbling slightly. Purple light glowed outward from the sutras. It was brilliant and dazzling for a few seconds, then it dimmed and vanished. The girl remained where she had been, still wearing Rin's old kimono and her girlhood face.

The sutra papers fluttered to the dirt of the road, spent and useless. Jishin moved forward, brushing aside the papers with her bare foot in disgust. Her voice was Shippo's still but in a low range that the kit almost never used. "You have no choice Lady Rin," she repeated. "I will take you _or_ Saya for this task. Wouldn't you prefer that your daughter live? And you know, if you serve me well, you may survive the task yourself and I would set you free. Our bargain would be satisfied. You don't have to die either…"

"But Lord Sesshomaru does," Rin muttered, her voice beginning to quake though her expression was stony and her eyes dry. "That's what you want, isn't it?" She drew a deep, shaky breath. "That's what you've always wanted."

"Why do you—a goddess of destruction—need Lady Rin to kill Sesshomaru?" Miroku asked. He had fished out several new sutras. Some were like the first that he'd thrown. Others were new and different with characters for _banish_ and _restraint_ and _spirit protection_ written on them.

"The laws of Fate, Life, and Death are beyond your understanding, human. My hands can kill or heal, or they can simply maim and harm. Tell me, human, what level of pain are you willing to endure to protect Lady Rin and the hanyou with you?" Jishin raised one of her arms and pointed at Miroku's sutras. The papers burst into wild flames, licking at Miroku's hair, his hands, and his robe. The monk released the burning papers with a gasp and stamped on them in the dirt.

"I could begin with the monk to demonstrate," Jishin said, grinning with a sick enjoyment. "I can kill him in an instant." Her pointed finger jabbed at the air and Miroku cried out with pain, falling to his knees.

"Miroku!" Inuyasha reached for the other man, pulling on his arm and supporting his shoulder. "Hey! Get up!" He snarled over his shoulder past Rin to where Jishin stood in her childish form. "You bitch! Stop it! I'll kill you!"

Rin felt her knees wobble. She held the back of Saya's head, felt her daughter's warm and moist breathing on her neck and shoulder. "You cannot kill a goddess," she whispered to herself.

"I'll stop his heart," Jishin said. Her finger stayed in the air, pointing at Miroku's slumped body. She moved it in a faint, tiny increment and Miroku screeched with pain. His hands clutched at his chest and his throat. His face colored bright red.

"Stop!" Rin shouted. "Stop! I'll do what you want!"

"Rin—shut the hell up!" Inuyasha yelled, but caught between supporting Miroku and holding the enormous Tetsusaiga while Rin had Saya, the hanyou was handicapped. They were too-few of a group to fight such a powerful foe.

"You should be grateful, hanyou." Jishin grinned and gradually lowered her pointed finger. "She's saving all of you." She pinned Rin under her green eyes. "Hurry now. Give Saya to Inuyasha. They must be on their way back home."

Rin shook her head. "No, you let them go to Lord Shimofuri's castle."

Jishin cocked her head to one side and laughed with Shippo's boyish, innocent voice. "You don't want to send your child into that warzone, do you? Lord Shimofuri is soon to die. There is nothing for them in the Middle Lands. Only death." She gazed at Inuyasha and the panting, weakened Miroku. "Take Saya back to your home and do not get in my way."

Inuyasha growled, low and deep, but said nothing.

With a wet sound like a cough, Rin turned and closed the small distance between herself and Inuyasha and Miroku. She stared between them for a moment as the tears slipped out of her eyes unrestrainedly. Slowly, tenderly, she extended her arms, moving Saya further away from her body. Inuyasha, scowling fiercely, blocked her attempt.

"Rin, don't. Don't fucking do this…"

"If you fight she'll kill Miroku. You have to take Saya and protect her." Rin pushed Saya with more force at the hanyou. The girl's limp body shifted and bounced like a ragdoll at the increased movement.

Again Inuyasha blocked the motion, shaking his head. His ears laid flat on his head and a slight moisture had started in his eyes. "No…"

"Inuyasha," Rin growled through gnashed teeth. She inhaled through her teeth as well, making a sharp, startling hiss. "Take Saya. She's your daughter now." Speaking the words set her head spinning. The sunlight overhead pierced her head through her eyes like a pickax. The crop fields suddenly seemed abnormally bright, a neon green.

Inuyasha snatched Rin's forearm, pulling her closer to him and whispering gutturally, "_I'm not letting you give up."_

"Just protect Saya," Rin cried. "Forget about me." She shifted the little girl over to the hanyou but again started to refuse. This time Miroku intercepted and took Saya, cradling her. Inuyasha watched with darkness in his eyes and rage set in his jaw. The rage of helplessness, fueled by the pain of impending loss. If Jishin succeeded then Inuyasha would lose a brother and probably a pseudo-sister-in-law. If Jishin was untrue to her word, a chance that seemed almost a surety, then it could cost him Saya too and perhaps Miroku, Shippo, and after that Kagome, Akisame, Koinu…where would it stop?

Before Rin turned back to the waiting goddess, she touched Saya's hair, caressed her cheek. She blinked to clear her eyes of moisture, focusing on her child's face to engrave the image into her memory to take it with her for whatever time remained to her. Shakily, but with delicate care, Rin stroked the purple crescent moon on Saya's forehead, feeling the smoothness of her child's skin. Without looking to either the monk or Inuyasha, she said, "I know you'll both keep her safe."

"We will," Miroku reassured her with a painful expression that pinched his brow and his lips.

"Hurry," Jishin urged.

Rin wrenched herself away and fearlessly crossed to where Jishin stood. Her jaw was tight, the muscles in her temple bunched. Time moved with a lackadaisical slowness that stabbed at Rin's heart. She thought of her parents, their colorless ghosts, then of the monk that had sat and talked with her in the realm of the dead. Her breath came in stilted inhalations. The other world was watching her; it was on her side, not on Jishin's.

There was hope yet… she had escaped Jishin's clutches once. Rin could do it again. She had been saved from death so many times as a mortal. Jishin could not be a serious threat…

Jishin stuck out her hand and offered Rin a hard, bland smile, devoid of warmth.

Without looking back at Inuyasha, Miroku, and the unconscious Saya, Rin laid her hand into Jishin's. The touch was solid, real flesh. It was a child's hand. Then Rin saw the blunt fingernails lengthen and warp, growing into a young fox's claws. The pink hair changed its spectrum, becoming a blond-red. Shippo, in his boyish form, emerged out of girl-child's body. Dust spilled over his skin, flowing of its own accord, moving over Rin.

Rin closed her eyes as the cold, needling pain swarmed over her hand and then up her arm to her shoulder and the rest of her body. It flowed over her face and a shadow covered over her senses, spinning her into the lonely dark as Jishin smothered her and hid her consciousness away within.

* * *

To Inuyasha and Miroku the transfer happened in the blink of an eye. The dust, a tawny color on Shippo, became black when it moved and covered Rin. It sank inside her, disappearing. Her outward appearance didn't change as far as they could tell until she turned slightly and glanced back at them with her red eyes.

"You bitch," Inuyasha snarled, growling.

Jishin smiled with Rin's lips, a warm and real expression. Tears on her face, cried moments before, were still wet and shining in the afternoon sun. She dropped Shippo's hand and the kit collapsed into the dirt, shuddering. "Take everyone and go home, human, hanyou. Do not continue on."

Daintily, Rin lifted her kimono sleeves and wiped at her teary face, sniffing. "It was nice seeing you again, Inuyasha." Her voice was Rin's, her motions as well. It wasn't hard for Inuyasha and Miroku to imagine the horror that lied ahead for both Rin and Sesshomaru. The ill Sesshomaru would accept Rin without suspicion or fear. Jishin would use Rin's body to slaughter him. Even if Sesshomaru realized that Rin was not as she seemed, would he be able to effectively defend himself?

Rin turned her back to them and began trotting ahead at a swift pace. As soon as she was several yards away, Inuyasha charged forward to help Shippo. Miroku stayed back, cuddling Saya to him and murmuring a few prayers for luck and guidance.

Shippo woke and embraced Inuyasha, whimpering. He cried for a time and as the sun climbed, the first after lunch travelers passed them with consternated stares, baffled by the crying boy, the white-haired hanyou, and the monk with the strange girl in his arms. When Shippo had recovered enough to stop crying and stand on his own, Inuyasha pointed in the direction that the possessed Rin had gone, into the Nanka.

"We're going after her," he announced.

"I'm not sure there's much we can do," Miroku conceded, cautiously. Saya's weight in his arms was already tiring him. He worried that the little should have come awake, but had not.

"Jishin's stuck in Rin's body," Inuyasha said, growling as he thought aloud. "She can't touch Sesshomaru for some reason. I'm betting she's fucking with us. She can only threaten us." He stood up straight, staring down the road with narrowed golden eyes. "We can warn Sesshomaru."

"How do we beat her there?" Miroku asked.

"She's taking the road." He turned to Shippo. "Runt—you've been to the Nanka and to see Shimofuri all the time. Can you find a shorter way through the forest?"

Shippo nodded and replied in a quivering voice, "Yeah."

"Then let's go." He glanced to Miroku and paused before asking, "Are you coming?"

"What about Saya?" the monk asked.

Inuyasha's face sobered as he saw the girl's white hair, her limp little feet. "I promised I would return her to Sesshomaru. So that's what I'm going to do."

* * *

A/N: Well more to come of course. Later. Hope this pleases!


	32. One Step Forward

A/N: **New Fan** don't worry it will happen soon. I promise. But you'll probably hate me this chapter... **CP **Stitched a nerve?? AHHH!! I can hardly imagine how horrible that must've been. I remain suspicious that my nerve on one side suffered some trauma because of the increased pain I had in recovery that was referred all the way down to my chin and still makes some of my teeth ache like they want to fall out. But it's all minor compared with what true nerve involvement is probably like (I shudder to think about it and I have to stop typing about it or I'll remember my own discomfort a little too vividly).

Anyway it was great to hear from everyone! I'm missing Simonkal! I hope when you get back you'll enjoy these chapters, everything to do with your lady ;-)

Disclaimer: I do not own them

Last Chapter: Jishin possessed Rin in an attempt to use her as a disguise to kill Sess. IY and company decided to disobey her by heading to Shimofuri's castle to warn Sess. Sess got up out of bed, he's feeling a little better ladies and gents...that's all I remember on the spot but Shiroihana is away gathering Sess's army and Shimo is fighting Kanseninu from the north, who's backed by Jishin.

* * *

**One Step Forward…**

Two hours after taking Rin's body under her control, Jishin came across heavy pedestrian traffic. She could have easily moved off the road, cutting through the fields and rice paddies and the villages to reach the forest. With Rin's powerful inuyoukai body she could cover the short distance in remarkably little time, but she thought it would be inaccurate of the body she inhabited. Rin's mind was bound by her human experience, her human memories. She had never touched her true form or traveled with the teleportation energy, cutting through space and time.

It was better to stay on the road, and when she had the opportunity she could test Rin's destructive powers, again untapped by Rin herself.

She wiggled her fingers, touching the sharp claws to her palms and then away. The humans meandered on the road with deadpan or fearful expressions. Kanseninu's army was approaching and the humans had heard the horror stories from other villages and towns in the Middle Lands. They weren't waiting to see whether the stories were true. Any of them that could leave did do.

Horses whinnied, dogs barked, oxen bellowed as they passed Rin. Villagers, farmers, field hands, men, women, and children began to watch Rin with undisguised bafflement. She was richly dressed though some of her robes were scuffed and dirty from travel; her hair was styled and pinned atop her head. She was alone, and she was heading into a warzone. They knew she was youkai, but they didn't know why she was on the road.

At last a priest appeared. He was not wearing his full regalia with his hat, but his robes were red and white, his face old and wizened. Yet his scent was strong with health. He moved with a walking stick that would double as his weapon. A string of people moved with him, flocking behind him like nervous sheep to their shepherd. A baby cried from in their midst, distracting Rin and Jishin alike.

She locked eyes with the priest guiding them and the man's eyes widened. His lips moved, whispering. A human would never have heard it, but Rin's inuyoukai ears revealed it to Jishin clearly: _"A demon!"_

His bony fingers closed more tightly around his walking stick, the knuckles bleaching white. His head turned as Rin moved past their group, ready to defend himself and those with him at the slightest threat that Rin might offer him. Like the monk accompanying Inuyasha, the priest reached into his robes with his free hand, searching for sutras.

Jishin decided now was a good time to test Rin's strength. She pivoted, turning round and lunging. Her clawed hand wrapped around the priest's fumbling hand and crushed his wrist. He screamed with pain and the dead hand fell limp. The sutras fluttered out of his wrinkled fingers. The humans behind him cried out with fear and stumbled away. Other men ahead or behind on the road stared and gaped. A few flew into action, gathering weapons and rushing to aid the priest.

Jishin pulled the priest closer, knocking him off his feet as she did so. He tumbled onto his knees and still she dragged him to the far edge of the road, away from the other humans. The priest bared his teeth like an animal but managed to scream through them as he lifted his walking stick and slashed for her head. The blow found its mark but Rin's body felt little more than a slight pressure. Jishin hauled the priest upward by the arm. The man screeched in a higher voice with fresh pain as his own body weight wrenched his arm out of the socket.

How frail humans were.

Jishin slashed with Rin's claws at his throat, tearing it out in a millisecond. Blood sprayed in an arterial flow, like water from a garden hose. Disgustedly, Jishin tossed the priest from her. He curled up below her on the ground, reaching for his neck. His eyes shone with life, but they were already unfocused with panic and shock. He would die in mere seconds.

Shouts announced the arrival of some farmers. One of them, a burly man rippling with muscle, hurled a pitchfork at her. Rin dodged it and rushed at him in a crouched lunge. She moved with the hyper speed of an inuyoukai, too fast for the humans to track with their feeble senses. She slashed the burly man in the gut and then in the back. He fell forward in mid step.

Screaming erupted from the other men; women began to wail in terror. Most of the humans ran rather than fight. Just like the prey animals they were.

Jishin flicked the blood from Rin's claws. She began walking away at a steady pace, leaving the carnage behind her. The humans that had meant to attack her stood back warily, unwilling to face her now that they had seen how fast she could move, how easily she could kill.

The human's blood now spattered over Rin's kimono, over her sleeves, the hem, and across one side. The blood would be a convincing cover for Sesshomaru, but not for any of the inuyoukai or the inuhanyou Tsukiyume. As Jishin licked the blood clean from Rin's claws, covering all evidence that she had brought on the blood herself, she considered what she would say to the human and youkai guards, then how she would evade Tsukiyume if the hanyou stood in her way. Her spies had told her that Shiroihana had left, giving her the opportunity to attack Sesshomaru again, and Shimofuri was out fighting Kanseninu, trying uselessly to save the Nanka and then the Middle Lands.

She would breeze into his castle and ask to see her mate. No one would think anything of it if she were grieving, covered in blood, alone. Sesshomaru's nose would be too weak to know that the blood was human, not Saya's. Jishin would play her part using Rin's body and memories, stealing just enough time to end his miserable, troublesome life.

* * *

By the time Ginrei arrived to see him, Sesshomaru had ordered a servant to remove the barricading screen that sheltered him from the prying eyes of others. As he had expected, but hoped against, Ginrei came with Tsukiyume in tow like a maid. The hanyou girl held Hanone in her arms while Ginrei stepped forward and knelt on the matting in front of where Sesshomaru stood in the corner where he had slept and suffered his illness.

"You asked to see me?" Her words were cold and dry. Her silvered eyes stayed pinned to the floor.

"Yes," Sesshomaru said. The bizarre desire swept over him to touch her hand. Would it be enough to make her look him in the eye? He ignored the thought, keeping his hands at his sides. His legs were weak and uncertain. He moved slowly, trying to hide the small quiver in his thighs. His thoughts were muddled by his weakness, but he gathered them, searching for what he'd wanted from her. It came out almost abruptly. "I did not have any part in my mother's plot."

"Plot?" Ginrei asked, growling out the word. "It seemed to me that it was a joke! At my expense alone!"

From the doorway where she was standing timidly, stroking Hanone's hair, Tsukiyume said, "No, Lady Ginrei, Lord Sesshomaru didn't know anything about what Lady Shiroihana planned. That was the entire point of her deception. She wanted to hurt her own son."

Sesshomaru turned toward the wall, pretending to be fascinated or distracted by it. He fought to smother the rush of rage at hearing Tsukiyume's take on Shiroihana's ploy. His hands, hidden in their sleeves, fisted up.

"She's horrible. Shameful," Ginrei muttered. Her voice changed, becoming shivery with deeper emotion. "I'll never give my daughter to her, never."

"You wish me to destroy the documents and leave our marriage intact?" Sesshomaru asked, watching the wall.

"Please, Lord Sesshomaru!" Tsukiyume stepped into the room hurriedly and fell to her knees behind Ginrei. She moved Hanone off her lap, letting the little girl toddle to Ginrei to cling to her instead. "Please—I don't approve of what Lady Shiroihana has done to you both, but her intentions are admirable. The clans are fragmented and more are dying now as we speak…"

Sesshomaru's mouth pinched tightly. The dull ache in his ribs rose up, making each breath a small agony. He closed his eyes. "I will meet with Rin when she returns and make my final decision then."

"_Please,"_ Ginrei cried from the floor, nearly shouting at his back. "You mustn't take Hanone from me, Lord Sesshomaru. _Please._"

Sesshomaru lifted his head and slowly, thinking of his mother's face as she lied to him, promising a match to some inuyoukai woman from the south, as she threatened him, suggesting that he would never recover, he came to a decision. "I will not set my name to an arrangement that takes Hanone from you."

"It is by name," Tsukiyume reminded them, faintly.

"I don't care," Ginrei muttered bitterly. "Hanone is _my_ daughter and that _bitch_ would take her away whether it was simply in name or not." She closed her eyes and squeezed Hanone tight to her, making the little girl growl in a tiny, high-pitched voice. "I _know_ she would take Hanone away."

"You are correct," Sesshomaru murmured. "She would. Perhaps not at first, but over time. Once Mother has set her mind to something she does not stop until it is done." He turned and moved quickly to hide the shaking in his legs, sitting in front of Ginrei to look her in the eye. "I'm afraid," he began, puffing from the small exertion for a moment, "that Mother will take Hanone in some other method, whether I agree or not."

Ginrei searched his human face and when she blinked tears had slipped out of her silvered eyes. "Lord Sesshomaru…"

"Be prepared, Ginrei. My mother is an unrivaled manipulator. I will work to keep Hanone with you, but you must be prepared for failure." He could offer no truer words than those to her. As Ginrei gazed at him, crying in silence, Sesshomaru focused on her silver hair, admiring the way that it flowed like ice. Hanone was watching him from where she clung to Ginrei's waist and when Sesshomaru met her stare, Hanone's mouth split into a grin. He tentatively reached out and touched his daughter. He had hoped to see her before Shiroihana stole her away. In a time when he could not recognize his own reflection, he saw himself in Hanone, but he also saw Ginrei.

_I will miss her,_ he thought, staring into Hanone's silver eyes. The twin marks on her cheeks were white like Ginrei's, but unlike her the pattern was Sesshomaru's with two straight lines. He withdrew his hand and glanced to Ginrei. Regret washed over him and he allowed a small fragmented smile to pull at the corners of his lips.

"Thank you, Lady Ginrei, for your loyalty to myself. It will not be forgotten."

Ginrei closed her lips tightly and nodded. "Yes. Thank you, Lord Sesshomaru."

* * *

Shippo's shortcut proved tiresome but rewarding. The darkness of the forest was disconcerting, reminding the kit, Miroku, and Inuyasha of their encounter with Jishin, of the shadowy dust that poured off her. In spite of the association nothing happened to slow their journey beyond thick forest and the occasional distracting scent of an animal.

Carrying Saya fatigued Miroku and soon Inuyasha took up the task by disrobing out of his haori and tying it into a sling. He secured it to his waist and his neck to shelter Saya. He trailed behind the others while he perfected the sling and set Saya inside it. Briefly he tried tapping Saya's cheeks and calling her name, but the girl showed little reaction. Her eyelids fluttered and her lips quirked, but she stayed limp and unconscious.

Worry mounted in his minds as they traveled. They quickened their pace; pushing Miroku to the limits, making the monk pant and his staff jangle continuously as he ran along behind Inuyasha and Shippo.

The sun had just begun to slant downward when Shippo brought them out of the woods to a sharp drop down a rocky hillside. Below them nearly a hundred feet was the road, dropping down to the plain where the castle town sat. Water sparkled in irrigation ditches and rice paddies for miles around them until the next series of dark hills rose up, colored green by the forest.

Shippo crept fearlessly to the edge and shivered before his shape vanished in a tawny colored explosion of dust. Miroku and Inuyasha moved after him and craned their necks to stare down to the road below. The kit reappeared in his boyish form there, just behind a man lugging his belongings on his back much as Inuyasha was hauling Saya. The man turned at the popping sound and yelped with alarm. "What the hell! Where did you come from?"

Inuyasha growled as he watched the scene below. "How the hell are we supposed to get down there without hurting Saya?"

"We'll find a spot where it is passable." Miroku motioned with his staff toward the town. "The land is flattening quickly."

Inuyasha remained unconvinced. "Flattening quickly usually means a cliff. No easy way down."

"Of course you could leap this distance easily," Miroku observed with a wry smile.

"And jar the hell out of Saya!"

"You have leaped with Kagome unconscious on your back before…" Miroku pointed out.

"Kagome was fully grown! Terrible shit happens to little kids _really_ easy." He glared at Miroku and grunted, "Feh, why am I telling you that? You should already know it cuz your kids are all fucking nuts."

Miroku shook his head with a frown. "I take offense to that, Inuyasha."

"Yeah? Well," he fidgeted as he spoke, guiltily. "I didn't mean it. Just trying to be funny, Monk."

"Of course," Miroku muttered, rolling his eyes. "But I believe you could jump this distance without harming Saya."

"What are you waiting for, boys?" Shippo shouted up at them. He had adopted a different form, that of a scantily clad woman with a bright, gaudy, and torn robe. The obi tied in the front, marking her as a prostitute. The man that had been traveling, likely a refugee, was smiling at her warmly, without embarrassment. Shippo had enchanted him, making the man nearly blind to whatever shape Shippo took.

Grumbling, Inuyasha took off the makeshift haori-sling and tucked Saya close to his chest. He held her head to his shoulder and approached the rocky hillside. Lightly jumping, Inuyasha slid on the embankment, wobbling somewhat before stumbling to a stop at the bottom. He clung stubbornly to Saya throughout it, unwilling to free one hand from her small body to stabilize himself. At the bottom he passed Saya to Shippo and scaled back up the hillside to collect Miroku.

When he reached the road again Shippo had already decided to use Saya in his deception. Now he was holding Saya out to the traveling man and cooing in a whiny feminine trill, "Would you like to hold her?"

"Of course, my lady," the man agreed, grinning. He held out his arms to receive what he thought was an abnormally large and very ugly baby.

Inuyasha dropped Miroku off his back so suddenly that the monk fell onto his back in the dusty road, wheezing as the air was forced out of his lungs with the hard landing. While Miroku caught his breath, Inuyasha charged forward and slapped the man's hands with a snarl. "Don't you fucking touch her!"

The man cried out with fear and ran away without another word. Inuyasha glared after him for only a moment before he whipped around to snatch Saya back from Shippo. "What the fuck was that, Shippo? Did your body separate from your brain while you were teleporting?"

"I would never have hurt her! I just wanted to see if he would do it!" Shippo crossed his arms over his chest and pouted.

"If I ever catch you doing stupid shit like that again, I'll break every bone in your body, got that runt?" He jabbed a claw at the kit, driving the threat home.

Shippo took a step backward, intimidated. "Yeah, sorry. I didn't mean anything bad by it…"

"Let's get going," Inuyasha snapped. He stomped past Shippo and then Miroku, ignoring the irritated look on the monk's face and the way he rubbed his backsides.

They had no way of knowing with certainty that Rin hadn't reached Shimofuri's castle, and Sesshomaru within it, before them. While the road was elevated, Inuyasha scanned the land around the castle and the town surrounding it. Smoke obscured the horizon leading deeper into the Middle Lands and Inuyasha smelled carnage on the wind. Jishin hadn't been lying about the place becoming a warzone.

"Who do you suppose is winning?" Miroku asked as the refugees poured past them, deadpan and loaded with their belongings, weighed down by the grief of fleeing from their homes.

"Don't care," Inuyasha grunted, but his hold on Saya's fragile, limp body tightened protectively. "We'll be there soon."

The town was mostly deserted. As the ragtag group walked toward the castle on walkways of fine stone and wood, they startled a group of teenage boys that had been looting a two story building, a textile worker's store. Shippo shouted after them, scolding them in a tone that mimicked Inuyasha heavily. The boys ran with bundles of kimono fabric in their arms, as precious to them as Saya was to Inuyasha.

A wall surrounded the courtyard before the lofty castle with its tall spires with their tapered wooden roofs. One guard was positioned at the gate in full armor, though when Inuyasha, Miroku, and Shippo approached he was nowhere to be seen. Long before they reached the guardhouse, Inuyasha and Shippo heard a woman's voice moaning groggily.

"Someone's in trouble!" Shippo exclaimed, pointing to the guardhouse.

While Shippo rushed forward, bristling with bravery, Inuyasha and Miroku lingered behind. Miroku couldn't hear the sounds yet and Inuyasha hesitated because of the rhythmic nature of the moaning. The hanyou lifted his hand and called to Shippo, "Hey, Shippo, no one's hurt, slow down."

The kit paused before the guardhouse door, lifting his head and listening as Inuyasha spoke. The sounds had ceased, but already by scent he knew that Inuyasha had been right. He backed away and covered his mouth and nose with both hands, frowning at the scent of sex. His face glowed red with embarrassment.

"Hey! Hey asshole!" Inuyasha shouted at the guardhouse. "Get out of there and let us inside!"

A guard emerged, lacking much of the expected armor, though he had a sword in hand. His face was pinched tightly with what appeared to be rage, but when he saw the bizarreness of the visitors, the emotion subsided, replaced by open embarrassment and suspicion. "Who are you people?"

Shippo spoke first, "I'm Shippo. I was here really recently. These are my friends Inuyasha and Miroku. We've come with Lord Sesshomaru's daughter Saya."

"I don't know you," the guard said to Shippo, scowling. His dark eyes flew to the bundle wrapped in Inuyasha's red haori and pressed safely to the hanyou's chest. "Did you say Lord Sesshomaru's daughter…?"

"Show him," Miroku ordered.

Growling with irritation and distrust, Inuyasha stepped ahead and pulled on his haori as he neared the guard, exposing Saya's curled, motionless body inside. The guard glanced at Saya once, then flinched away from Inuyasha and gawked. "Wait, what did you say your name was?"

"Open the gate and let us through, idiot," Inuyasha snarled, losing patience.

The guard nodded his head mutely, losing the power and the intelligence to form words. He rushed back to the guardhouse and stepped inside. A woman's voice questioned him but the guard ordered her to into silence. When he reappeared the guard had the get to the gate. He opened it for their group and shouted after them as they walked, trying to raise the rest of the residence.

A male servant rushed through the courtyard to intercept them shortly, racing down a long flight of stairs that led up the castle's wooden verandah. The stairway was removable and the castle, with its first floor elevated and covered in protective stone, would be nearly impenetrable without it, at least if the attackers were human. The servant asked about them but when his eyes found Shippo and then Inuyasha they widened and he fell silent, leading them onward.

Soon Inuyasha found himself in the audience room that he recalled having seen Lady Taikokajin in years previously when Koinu had been only an infant. He fidgeted with nervousness while they waited. When the maids set down trays of tea for them, Inuyasha didn't wait for them to pour him a cup as was proper. He dismissed the small woman that had come to attend him and poured a cup of the tea for himself and slurped it down impatiently, like a man at a bar that had come with the express purpose of drowning in booze. The hot water burned his throat and he hacked loudly, spluttering on the water.

The maids rushed and arrived with small, decorative clothes that they offered him. Inuyasha took them but didn't use them, choosing his sleeves instead. He crunched on the little rice cakes and craned his head out awkwardly to avoid dribbling crumbs onto where he had positioned Saya in her haori-sling on his lap.

"Do you suppose your brother will arrive himself to meet with you?" Miroku asked, quietly as he languorously lifted his own teacup to sip on.

"Feh," Inuyasha grunted. He eyed the inner doors to the audience room, waiting for them to open. The room was empty, devoid of the usual hidden guards that would have normally lined the walls. They were all out fighting the war Jishin had told them about.

"Perhaps we should ask one of the maids to relay a message of urgency," Miroku suggested.

"If he's alive, he'll be here," Inuyasha said.

"He _is_ alive," Shippo said. "I'm sure we've arrived before her. But Sesshomaru might not be able to come down, or anyway, he won't want to see you now. Not while he's human."

Inuyasha's ears flicked back and forth. His face rippled with irritation. "I ain't giving Saya to him until I _see_ him, face to face."

"I wanna see him too!" Shippo chirped. "I wonder what he looks like as a human!"

"Ugly like always," Inuyasha muttered. "With a big stick up his ass."

"I'll ask the maids to tell him it's urgent…"

"No," Inuyasha said. "No time for that. Everyone's gone right now. No one is here to stop us. I say we go to him if he won't come to us fast enough."

"Agreed," Miroku said, suddenly smiling widely. "I have to say that even if you aren't curious, Inuyasha, I share Shippo's sentiments. Seeing Sesshomaru as a human…"

Inuyasha was already on his feet and moving for the inner doors. "Shut up and get moving." He opened up the door and rounded the corner only to collide with a maid carrying another tray of tea. It fell, splattering and breaking on the hard floor. The maid cried out with alarm and then began to apologize profusely. Inuyasha ignored her, though he did curse as he walked through the hot tea and burned the soles of his feet. The maid trembled as they passed by, too afraid to stop them from breaking protocol and leaving without some resident of the castle accompanying them.

The next servant that Inuyasha ran across he stopped, asking where Sesshomaru was. The man's jaw worked the air mutely with astonishment as he gaped at the hanyou. Finally he managed to blurt, "You look like…"

"Yeah, I'm his brother. Where the hell is Sesshomaru?" Inuyasha demanded, giving the man a little shake.

"Oh, ah…" The man pointed up with one shaky finger. "A higher level."

"Thanks," Inuyasha grunted, releasing the servant who hurried away.

"You have a nice way with people, as usual, Inuyasha," Miroku murmured, smirking.

They located the stairs and moved up them, Shippo leading the way. The kit teleported, winking in and out of existence nearly every other step. On the landing for each level he disappeared into the halls, aware and searching for demonic auras. Although Sesshomaru was supposedly human, it stood to reason that Shimofuri or Tsukiyume were with him, and Jaken too, and Shippo could detect those auras. Finally, just as Miroku was beginning to breathe hard from exertion, Shippo popped up and waved his hands to stop them.

"I think it's this level. I sense Tsukiyume here."

"Even if she isn't with him, I'm sure she'll give us better directions," Miroku murmured, taking a long, deep breath.

Inuyasha peered at the monk over his shoulder and smirked. "You're out of shape!"

Miroku frowned, looking distinctly disgruntled, though not outright insulted by Inuyasha's comment. "I am _out of practice,"_ he corrected the hanyou stiffly. "I suspect _you_ are too, but because you're not human you—"

"Feh, quit wasting time by talking. Let's move." Inuyasha pressed forward onto the landing, following Shippo as the kit romped on all fours in his boyish form. Miroku sighed behind them dejectedly and finished climbing the last few stairs at a faster rate to catch up.

It wasn't long before they found a potbelly maid in a gray-blue kimono who stared at them slack-jawed for only a second before she snatched at Shippo's arm and started yelling, "Hey! What are you three doing up here? The master's out—how _dare_ you sneak in here!"

"I'm sorry ma'am," Miroku said, as smoothly as he could. "We were expected but we've arrived too late to be escorted by—the master himself…"

She eyed him suspiciously and then frowned as she saw Inuyasha fidgeting impatiently. Her gaze moved over his features and with a blink of surprise she released Shippo's arm. "You look like…"

Inuyasha rolled his eyes, interrupting her. "Look—I'm here with Sesshomaru's daughter."

"What?" the maid asked, astounded for a second time. The hanyou gestured for her to come closer and pulled on his haori, opening it to show where Saya was tucked away inside. The maid leaned close and squinted, trying to see for a time. Then she pulled back as if she'd been slapped. "She has the crescent moon…" She nodded to herself and then lifted her head to regard her unusual visitors. "I will show you to his room but you cannot be left alone with him. Perhaps send in the boy alone with the girl—"

"No," Inuyasha snapped. "I ain't handing over Saya unless I _see_ Sesshomaru for myself." His clawed hands closed over the lump in the makeshift sling he'd made from his haori, holding it like an expectant mother would to support her burgeoning belly.

The maid gave him a doubtful look. "We have the highest orders to protect Lord Sesshomaru from _all_ visitors. Who are you exactly?"

Inuyasha's ears fell flat and he huffed with annoyance. "I'm his fucking brother. Take me to the bastard already!"

Suddenly Shippo called out, "Tsuki!"

Down the long, straight hallway, slipping out from a room on the corner, Tsukiyume had emerged. Her long black hair was free-flowing behind her, recently combed, but her clothing was incomplete. She was wearing only her under robe, which was dark purple with its collar and hems trimmed by gold, the beginning to an elaborate, formal kimono. A maid followed her with a pale, stricken expression, pawing at Tsukiyume's shoulders, trying to stop her.

The potbellied maid that had been speaking with Inuyasha stepped back and dropped to her knees in a bow, murmuring, "My lady."

"Tsuki," Shippo said, "can you take us to wherever Lord Sesshomaru is?"

"I was just getting dressed with Lady Ginrei to meet with you in the audience room," she said. "I heard your voices from inside the room…" Her voice trailed away as she took them in and blinked with alarm. "Where is Lady Rin?"

"That's what we came here to tell Sesshomaru about," Inuyasha growled.

Tsukiyume's attention moved to the lump on Inuyasha. Her nostrils flared as she confirmed her suspicions. "You've brought Lord Sesshomaru's daughter! He'll be so happy…" She started to move forward, leaving the stricken maid behind her in the doorway but Inuyasha let out a hard sound like a bark—a warning.

"I ain't handing Saya over to you. I'll only give her to Sesshomaru."

A different voice rose up from inside the dressing room that Tsukiyume and the maid had been in. It was softer than Tsukiyume's yet more powerful and authoritative, a voice trained in etiquette and feminine beauty from a very young age. "Lord Sesshomaru is not able to have visitors at this time."

"Yeah? And who the hell are you to make that decision for him?" Inuyasha demanded, stomping forward. Tsukiyume grabbed his arm, shaking her head, trying to intercede on behalf of the speaker, to stop a fight. It did little good as Inuyasha bowled through her. Shippo hopped to stand beside Tsukiyume; steadying her while Miroku lifted his staff, ready to thwack Inuyasha with it if the hanyou's aggressive nature got the better of him.

Before Inuyasha could reach the doorway, a figure appeared, moving with tiny steps. Unlike Tsukiyume, this inuyoukai woman had finished dressing. Her outer kimono was dark green with a white collar tinged with gold. Inuyasha knew by scent that she was unrelated to himself and to Tsukiyume in spite of her light colored hair, the long freshly combed strands of silver shone in the light from the windows inside the room. As interesting as that was it told him almost nothing about who she really was.

"Lady Tsukiyume," the inuyoukai woman murmured. "You should finish dressing."

"Yes, Lady Ginrei," Tsukiyume agreed, letting out a little sigh. Her cheeks colored when she looked down at herself, though the under robe was not truly inappropriate or indecent in any way. She touched Shippo's hand, silently asking him to let her go. Unseen by the others, the hanyou girl and the kit exchanged tender smiles of affection before Tsukiyume walked back to the room, slipping past Ginrei on her way, disappearing into the dressing room.

"So," Inuyasha began, watching Ginrei warily with both hands clasped over where Saya was tucked safely in his haori. "You're Sesshomaru's wife."

Ginrei's expression soured, nearly frowning. "Yes."

Silence absorbed the group for a time while Inuyasha considered his options. He realized quickly that he was staring at Rin's competition. Rumor had arrived from the Western and Middle Lands, mostly from Shippo, that Sesshomaru had two daughters. Only one of them was Rin's, resting in Inuyasha's haori. The other would belong to Ginrei. Another niece for Inuyasha to meet. But did the mothers get along? With the experience of his own past, Inuyasha doubted it. Not only had Inuyasha been privy to the rivalry between Kagome and Kikyo for his own attentions, but long before that Izayoi had whispered of her competition for Inutaisho, an evil inuyoukai woman that had haunted Izayoi's dreams in Inuyasha's youth. He could never trust Saya to Ginrei—but there was another matter she _should_ care very much about.

"Rin is coming to kill Sesshomaru," Inuyasha blurted.

Ginrei stared at him blankly. "What?"

"It's true!" Shippo interjected. "She's been possessed by a goddess!"

Tsukiyume cried out from inside the room with alarm. "A goddess?" The maid groaned a moment later and Tsukiyume stumbled into the doorway, bumping Ginrei to one side rudely. Her ears twitched atop her head. She was wearing an outer kimono robe now, white with swirling gold, but the dark blue obi was only partly tied. A long bundle of fabric trailed behind her. "Lady Shiroihana said there was a renegade goddess—Jishin. She's the one behind all this." Tsukiyume stammered onward, "She has Lady Rin? We must stop her, imprison her until this is all over. We can't kill her."

Ginrei had paled and could no longer look at the others. She was trapped inside her memories. The last few attacks on Sesshomaru had involved Tsukiyume's cousins Amagumori and Soeki. Ginrei had fought bitterly with them both, killing Amagumori with Bakusaiga to keep Sesshomaru and Hanone safe. The thought of facing Rin made her bones feel hollow and her stomach like lead. She barely noticed as Tsukiyume rushed away down the hall, guiding all three of their guests toward Sesshomaru's room. It was only the wafted scent of one of them—the hanyou carrying Saya—that she realized his identity fully and jolted out of her disturbing reverie.

_Inuyasha._ Her brother-in-law.

Her thoughts darted to Hanone, who she had left with Sesshomaru when a servant arrived with the news that they had important guests. She scurried after them, eager to offer her protection if it was needed and most importantly to watch over her precious daughter.

* * *

A cloudy, incorporeal shape lunged at Shimofuri. It had once been a troll of some kind, but now it was little more than a shade, a soul that had been resurrected by Jishin to fight Kanseninu's battle for him. In the hour since the skirmish had begun, Shimofuri had seen many of his own warriors drop dead from real wounds inflicted by monsters that they could not kill. The shades could be dispersed and their touch was less deadly than that of the fighting corpses, those that could still wield real weapons, zombies that were harder to kill. Even after Shimofuri lopped off their heads the corpses fought on, slashing and lunging and killing.

He lashed out with his sword Ribikou and the shade illuminated with the sword's power, fluorescing. Shimofuri bellowed incoherently as he landed more blows. The shade's shape began to waver as the blows dispersed it.

A warrior screamed nearby. Shimofuri smelled blood but failed to notice that it had actually spattered him. The wolf demon at his side had suffered a mortal injury. A corpse had bitten into his neck. It was a massive spider youkai with bristly hairs over its body, though in some spots the hairs had come off, decaying. The main part of the body was bloated and stank with such force that Shimofuri cringed and gagged as he rushed to help the dying wolf.

The spider was trying to do what it would have done in life: eat the wolf. The forelegs were partially severed by slashes that the wolf and other warriors had made on it, but the spider pushed the wolf's body crushingly into itself, pulling his kicking legs from the ground.

If the spider had venom than the wolf was certainly doomed, but if its venom had decayed there was a slim possibility that Shimofuri could save the wolf.

Shimofuri sheathed his sword even as his body changed, losing its narrowness, growing. He allowed his true shape to appear, more massive than the one he used for travel. A blue-black dog with a long, fluffy tail. Larger than the spider, Shimofuri growled as he smashed it beneath his paw. The spider squeaked and squirmed. Its hold on the wolf failed and he fell to the ground. Shimofuri dragged his paw backwards over the ground, smearing the spider's body over the charred, rocky earth. The corpse was fragile and splintered apart under Shimofuri's weight.

Pain spiked through his hind leg. Shimofuri turned and saw that the shade he had dispersed before had reformed. It was reaching with incorporeal hands into Shimofuri's leg, at the ankle joint. Its touch drew blood, slick, hot, and bright red. It dribbled onto the grass and through the shade's body. Shimofuri jerked his foot up and kicked through the shade, dispersing it all over again.

His large size attracted too much attention. More shades appeared, slithering through the trees. A centipede made its way up his other hind leg. The pain was small but sharp. Shimofuri shook violently, flinging away the pesky shades. A scorpion shade jabbed his shoulder with its stinger, bringing on a bright flash of ghostly pain from venom that no longer existed but somehow could still hurt. Shimofuri strained his neck and bit through it, scattering its parts.

By the time Shimofuri curled his head down and dropped into his bipedal form to examine the wolf youkai he'd tried to save, the warrior was already dead. A faint stink emanated from him, the mark that the spider had somehow kept its venom. While the shades and corpses moved and slithered closer to him, eager to resume their attack in mass now that Shimofuri was smaller in size, the young inuyoukai leader felt the first tendrils of hopelessness.

Since their battle had begun Kanseninu's warriors had disappeared, slinking away from danger while the corpses and shades remained, nearly unbeatable. Shimofuri's warriors were dying in multitudes while Kanseninu's forces left them behind, advancing unopposed toward Shimofuri's castle and the heart of the Nanka.

A gurgling yowl suddenly drew Shimofuri's attention. He lifted his head and saw with a shock his next foe brandishing long, sharp claws. It was the bleeding corpse of a cat youkai—but not just any cat youkai. This was one of Shimofuri's own warriors. It was the cat that had come from Sakaime and had thought that Sesshomaru was dead.

In spite of the gaping hole in the cat's belly, through which pink intestines dangled and dragged, and the stink of blood, Shimofuri called out to the cat, "Stop this! I am your leader!"

The cat yowled and slashed at Shimofuri's neck. The inuyoukai backed up only to collide with a shade. His body passed through the incorporeal monster, a looming ogre. Shimofuri's face stung and his clothes singed, filling his nose with a burning stink. Shimofuri rushed out of the shade's form, slashing with his sword and cursing.

The cat followed him straight through the ogre shade's legs and gut, uncaring that the shade burned his whiskers and ears, singeing them. He leaped up and, while Shimofuri, half blind, stumbled out of the shade, the cat's strike found its mark. His claws cut into the armor on Shimofuri's stomach, caught the sash securing them and ripped through it. Shimofuri backed away, growling. The armor clanked to the ground.

_I'm fighting my own warriors._ He thought of the wolf youkai. How long would it be before that wolf rose up and turned on him too?

The next thought was swift and firm: _I must retreat to save them._

"Retreat!" he shouted, raising his voice as loud as he could. "Fall back!"

The corpse of a headless human came barreling for Shimofuri then, colliding clumsily with the cat demon. Both bodies rolled back into the ogre shade and smoked as the shade's touch corroded their clothing, hair, and skin.

"Retreat!" Shimofuri yelled, baring his fangs with the bitterness of loss and defeat. "Save yourselves!"

Suddenly the earth began to shake, rumbling under Shimofuri's boots. The leaves on the trees rustled, disturbed by the pounding of the earth. Shimofuri sheathed his sword, preparing to take on his true form again, but a yowl from behind him stopped him short as the cat sprang with his claws raised. Shimofuri kicked with his foot, knocking the cat from the air, but it shredded his blue-gray hakama pants as he flung it away.

A living troll appeared suddenly from the trees, bowling them over with a club made of stone. It roared incoherently and lowered its horned head, lunging into the corpse of another troll that was nearly identical except for being dead. Shimofuri watched it with surprise, realizing that he didn't know the troll. It was not part of his army.

Another appeared, this one a different color but otherwise much the same. Like its companion it charged into the battle, but its chosen opponent was the shade of a massive snake. Shimofuri almost raised his voice to warn the troll but rather than passing right through the shade, the troll's body glowed faintly when its head made contact with the shade. The shade's weightless body puffed into a thousand frangments, puffs of colors air, and then faded completely.

Shimofuri's jaw dropped with astonishment. _How…?_

Then the cat was on him, yowling and hissing. Its claws found his shoulders and ripped through his haori, tearing skin beneath. Shimofuri howled with pain and fury. He kicked out as they rolled. The cat's blood spilled onto his face and his clothes, blinding and choking him. With an effort he stopped the spinning roll and used his own claws, slashing out the cat's neck. It yowled, gurgling in more of its own blood. Shimofuri drew his sword and struck in a wide arc, carving the cat in half.

The cat's body, in two parts, rolled away.

Shimofuri got to his feet and had a second to see that more warriors had arrived on the scene, all of them unfamiliar. Wolves, pigs, bears, trolls, ogres, and a smattering of inuyoukai.

"I'm glad to see you alive, Lord Shimofuri," a voice came from behind him.

Shimofuri turned and saw two unfamiliar inuyoukai men standing a few feet from him in full armor and regalia. They were not leaders like him, Shimofuri could tell that by the poorer quality of their haori and hakama and their armor as well, but they were generals.

"Where is Lady Shiroihana?" Shimofuri asked, guessing that this was at least part of the army of the Western Lands. "Who are you both?"

"I'm Daken," the older inuyoukai introduced himself. With a thumb he pointed to the younger general at his side. "This is General Oushi. Lady Shiroihana sent us to aid you in a little pest extermination." Daken smirked as he spoke, making Shimofuri uncomfortable, as if the older inuyoukai were teasing him.

"How are your warriors defeating the shades?" Shimofuri demanded.

"That's Lady Shiroihana's work, not ours," Daken answered. He did not smirk and something in his wrinkled, narrowed eyes softened. It was an odd expression and even within the midst of battle, Shimofuri picked out emotion from the old dog. It was the sense he had picked out at times when his mother had met with a distant relative, or when Sasugainu spoke of Koshoshiro, Shimofuri's grandfather. It was the shadow of a past history, an unknown to a young pup like Shimofuri. With abrupt clarity, he thought: _There is something there, something for her…_

"Look out!" Oushi shouted and raced forward before Shimofuri could react. The general slashed at the headless human's corpse that had gotten back to its feet and moved to throttle Shimofuri from behind. Oushi cut down the headless human with one blow and then lunged for the ogre shade a few more feet away. When his sword impacted the formless shape it dissolved, floating away harmlessly, like soap bubbles blown by a child.

Daken laughed. "Yeah, definitely Lady Shiroihana's work. Let's clean up this mess and get home!"

* * *

A/N: The triumphant return of Oushi and Daken! Ah ha ha!


	33. Brother Mine

A/N: As I was writing this I felt, oddly, like Inuyasha was speaking to me. I wanted to have the brothers be aggressive and tense, and their usual, biting each other's heads off. But as I wrote, I realized that these two, in spite of what they want others to think, they have hearts. Inuyasha isn't going to kick Sess when he's down, so what came out was an awkward concern. I hope this strikes all of you as potentially accurate. Especially since this Inuyasha is an older, matured Inuyasha.

And Shiroihana appears crazy but...I think you will all know she isn't...

Disclaimer: I do not own them.

Last Chapter: A BIG cliffhanger. Miroku, Shippo, IY and the unconscious Saya journeyed to the Middle Lands to see Sess. Tsukiyume and Ginrei intercepted them before they could steal in and see him. Shimo is fighting to protect his lands, but it was a losing battle as soon he was fighting the reanimated corpses of his own warriors. Then Daken and Oushi (last seen in Runaway) swooped in and saved the day with Sess's army, which appears to be invulnerable to the reanimated corpses. Daken explained that was Shiroihana's work. Shiroihana was not with the army itself, but somewhere else...meanwhile Jishin killed some people to test Rin's shiny new body.

* * *

**Brother Mine **

Hanone giggled and pranced through the room, running from side to side. Sesshomaru watched her from his corner where he tapped his blunt fingers on his knees, impatiently waiting for news from Tsukiyume or Hanone. A maid had come sometime ago and breathlessly—she had run up multiple flights of stairs to reach them as quickly as she could—related news of important guests waiting in the audience room below. Her exact description had been of a monk, a fox, and a man with dog ears and white hair.

"The guard at the gate said that they have come with the lord's daughter."

The maid's description had been enough for Sesshomaru to identify his younger brother, but the idea that the wretched hanyou had arrived with Saya set Sesshomaru's mind afire. Handicapped by his illness, and by the embarrassment of his changed appearance, frustration made Sesshomaru short tempered as he commanded Ginrei and Tsukiyume to meet with their guests and take Saya from them before sending them away.

Now he stared at the sliding door, straining to hear footsteps, sniffing at the air with instinct but finding nothing. His senses were still feeble though his anticipation had set his body on edge with adrenaline. He let Hanone play, hoping that her behavior would tip him off to anyone approaching the door. A multitude of fears drifted about in his skull. What if Saya refused him while his scent was still human? What if Inuyasha, the stubborn idiot that he was, did something stupid and forced his way into the room? What if Saya had been harmed? Where was Rin? What had happened to her? His gut roiled with a nervous nausea and he considered with horror the thought of vomiting on himself just as Tsukiyume and Ginrei—or unfathomably, Inuyasha and his companions—walked through the door.

His fears swelled, rising and falling like waves in an ocean, all of it behind his eyes, beyond his blanked face. He breathed slowly and between periods of watching the door, he followed Hanone with his eyes, letting her childhood innocence calm him. She was tossing around and chewing on one of his discarded socks, lost in bedrolls and furs during his long illness. It was woefully undignified behavior, but Sesshomaru found it oddly enjoyable, soothing, to watch his daughter destroying the bit of fabric.

When Hanone was beside the door, growling to herself in a comical, high-pitched whine, shaking the white sock viciously, Sesshomaru became aware of the steady vibration in the floor under him. Someone was approaching the door and they were not coming quietly or with small, feminine feet.

"Hanone," he called. "Come away from there."

Hanone lifted her head and blinked with her silvered eyes. She smiled and her fangs stuck out of her mouth awkwardly. A stream of drool stretched from the floor to the sock in her mouth.

"Come away from the door," Sesshomaru repeated, motioning.

Hanone got to her feet and walked to him without spitting out the sock. When she was standing before him, Sesshomaru snatched the sock and tossed it into the corner opposite where he was sitting, away from the door. Hanone lunged after it but Sesshomaru grabbed her and held her. Hanone screeched and growled, baring her teeth at her father.

"I want!" she shouted and pawed in the direction of the sock with one clawed hand.

Sesshomaru ignored her demand and shifted awkwardly on his knees, turning his back to the door as quickly as he could. The heavy tread was coming on, fast. Hanone's warning cries changed into a full tantrum when he didn't release her and when he turned out of sight of the sock.

"Father! No!" She screamed her last coherent words before lightly scratching at his chest. Her claws cut into the fabric and Sesshomaru winced.

It was at that moment that the door slid open in a racket, jammed immediately, pushed off its track. The voice he had dreaded spilled into the room, saying his name in a deep, rough growl, "Sesshomaru…"

* * *

As soon as Inuyasha saw the room that Tsukiyume was headed for he pushed ahead of her, ignoring the small sound of surprise she made and the feeble attempt at grabbing his arm to slow him. He pulled the door open and barreled inside, blocking the path for the others, sniffing loudly once. The room smelled faintly of human sweat, old blood, and perhaps stomach acids from vomit. Layered on top of those other scents was one he recognized as baby spittle. Inuyasha's face wrinkled with disgust.

There were two people in the room, one was inuyoukai, but the aura was young and therefore weak. The other was—odd. The scent was mostly human, but there was an odd twang to it that made Inuyasha's ears fall flat on his head. Sesshomaru smelled almost…_hanyou…_

Although the scent was altered, it was much as Rin's had been, still recognizable.

The man sitting on the floor was dressed in white haori and hakama with the usual simple pattern on the left shoulder that Inuyasha recognized as his older brother's traveling clothes. The only exception was the lack of armor over Sesshomaru's shoulder. The man was too short to be Sesshomaru as an inuyoukai. As a human he would have been at a normal height. Black hair flowed down his back, thick and heavy.

"Sesshomaru…?" Inuyasha asked and then frowned at the deepness of his voice, the harshness of his growl, all a reflection of his tenseness.

The man on the floor tilted his head slightly, allowing Inuyasha to see a strip of skin that was too dark to match Sesshomaru's flawless, pale complexion. "Get out," he ordered in a strangled voice that had to struggle to be heard over the screaming child that Inuyasha could smell and hear but couldn't see.

_Even his voice…_Inuyasha stared in wonderment. His brain was like an intersection after an accident. No traffic could cross; it was at a standstill while his emotions bickered within, tearing his sentient thoughts apart.

Tsukiyume pushed on Inuyasha's backsides, forcing him further into the room to clear the way. Her obi trailed behind her, untied. She flung herself down onto the tatami mats behind where Sesshomaru sat and babbled rapidly. "Lord Sesshomaru! Forgive me! I had to bring them here. Lord Inuyasha insisted—"

"He is not a lord," Sesshomaru snapped, nearly shouting to compete with his daughter's wailing.

Shippo popped up into a position just behind Tsukiyume and to one side. A wide grin covered his face. "Amazing! He _really_ is human!"

"Get out!" Sesshomaru yelled. The child's crying increased in volume and intensity, fueled by her father's anger.

"Please Lord Sesshomaru! I had to let them in because Inuyasha insisted that he would not give Saya to anyone but you—and he's come with some horrible news about Lady Rin." Tsukiyume had not risen from her bow but she had awkwardly extended one leg to kick at Shippo, pushing him back from Sesshomaru with a frown.

Ginrei came through the door, slipping around where Miroku hovered, peeking in with undisguised fascination at Sesshomaru's long black hair. The monk did not have the benefit of a sharp nose to examine the room for scents. He could not read the underlying story of Sesshomaru's difficult illness. The sight of Sesshomaru's seemingly changed hair color was enough to convince him.

"Let me take Hanone," Ginrei said, walking stiffly into Sesshomaru's corner. She knelt and took the child from Sesshomaru without any objection from him.

Inuyasha saw the child, his second niece, for the first time. A red-faced, screaming girl with a runny nose. Her eyes were silver; her cheeks marked with four streaks, two on each cheek, white like her hair. She had an obvious resemblance to Ginrei, but Inuyasha caught features in her little face already that resembled ones he had seen in Sesshomaru many times and the connection was suddenly _funny._ Once, before Inuyasha's birth, Sesshomaru had been a shrieking brat that threw temper tantrums probably in the same exact way.

A deep chuckle escaped Inuyasha's lips first and then escalated into a full laugh. Ginrei didn't notice his merriment, she had moved to the opposite side of the room, as if removing herself from the whole affair. Her entire attention was focused on soothing the screaming toddler. And as the child's crying began to fade, Inuyasha's chuckling reached Sesshomaru's ears.

Sesshomaru's head turned slightly and for the first time Inuyasha managed to see his brother's new profile. It had lost its perfection, becoming distinctly human, but at once recognizable and handsome. Amber-brown eyes slid to glare viciously at Inuyasha. "Get out…"

"Lord Sesshomaru?" Tsukiyume called, high and plaintively. "Did you hear what I said? They've brought terrible news!"

"It is horrible!" Shippo agreed, shuddering for dramatic effect. "The thing got R—"

Sesshomaru interrupted the kit, not paying him any mind at all. The sight of the bulge that Inuyasha carried in the makeshift sling had caught his eye. Coupled with the disturbing lack of movement from it and no other sight or sound of Saya, understanding dawned on him with horror. "What have you done with Saya?"

"Nothing," Inuyasha replied immediately. For a moment his mouth could form no other words as he saw his brother twist his neck further and even shift in his position to face Inuyasha directly. The look on Sesshomaru's face, the furrowed brow and jutting jaw, were so foreign that they wiped Inuyasha's mind clean. But finally, as he felt Saya's body heat through his haori, pride welled up to the surface and he leaned his weight forward to glower down at his brother. "I _protected_ her while _you_ couldn't."

Sesshomaru's upper lip curled upward, a motion that would have normally shown fangs but now—Inuyasha pulled back as if Sesshomaru had struck him. _His fangs are gone…_

The animosity he had felt for Sesshomaru melted. The old scent of illness and blood suddenly filled him with empathy, as if he had experienced them himself. The magnitude of Sesshomaru's suffering came painfully clear.

"Give Saya to me," Sesshomaru ordered, trying to growl with his human voice and failing.

Inuyasha paused and then took a step forward and sat down on the matting. The others watched the brothers, tense and wondering. Inuyasha reached delicately to his neck and untied his haori, opening the sling wide. With the utmost caution and gentleness, he lifted Saya from the sling and held her small body out to Sesshomaru.

The human man that had once been the inuyoukai Sesshomaru stared at Saya's limp body as Inuyasha passed her into his hands. The weight of the little body was enough to make his arms shake with weakness. Rather than risk dropping her, Sesshomaru lowered her to the matting in front of him. Forgetting his brother's presence and the others hovering near the doorway, he touched her forehead where the purple shape of the crescent moon resided, dulled into a color that could almost have been a bruise. He pressed one of his hands with its slender fingers over her chest and concentrated, listening with his feeble human ears for her inhalation.

"She's breathing," Inuyasha assured him, stiffly.

As if Inuyasha had startled him, Sesshomaru pulled back and looked up. His eyes were narrowed into fierce amber-brown slits. "What's happened to her? What have you done!"

"I didn't _do_ anything!" Inuyasha snapped, ears flattening. "We were attacked. That Jishu—"

"Jishin," Tsukiyume corrected him. "Jishin the goddess of destruction and her other self Koeru goddess of fertility and life."

"Yeah, whatever, that bitch. She attacked us while we were coming here. She had Saya and—"

Shippo took over, gesturing wildly. "And then there was this _huge_ white light! It was amazing! I had to close my eyes! Saya was the one that caused it. It was fox magic, but I don't know how she wielded it because she's inuhanyou and all…"

"There was a stone that Lady Rin took from her," Miroku put in.

"Yeah," Shippo chirped. "But it isn't with Saya anymore, Lady Rin took it. She still had it when Jishin forced her—when Jishin took her."

Sesshomaru's eyes bounced between each of the speakers and his breath stilled as he heard their disturbing story and his daughter remained unconscious. At last he heard mention of Rin and he swallowed hard. The world was cracking around him, splintering apart…

He closed his eyes, unsure that he could remain calm or in control as human emotions crashed over him and mixed with inuyoukai rage.

Seeing his brother's face, Inuyasha turned to the others and barked, "Hey, this ain't a pee show. Shippo, Tsuki, Miroku, get out of here. You too—ah, Sesshomaru's wife and the screaming kid."

"Inuyasha, she isn't crying anymore," Shippo said, laughing. "And I think you said Kagome's thing wrong. She doesn't say _pee show…_isn't it peanuts or something?"

"Who the fuck cares?" Inuyasha snapped. "If you don't get the hell out of here I'm going to shave all the fur off your tail with my claws. Got that?"

Tsukiyume pulled on Shippo's arm, moving for the door skittishly, like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs. Miroku also stepped back out of the door and as Shippo and Tsukiyume passed through it, the monk closed it. When Inuyasha glared at Ginrei, demanding without speaking that she follow them, Ginrei lifted her chin stubbornly.

"I am staying here with Lord Sesshomaru. You may be his brother, but I believe you are not on the best of terms." Her jaw jutted out with her conviction. "I am here to protect Lord Sesshomaru."

Inuyasha nodded curtly. "Fine. But no matter what, don't let Rin in here. She's out to kill him."

"Where is Rin?" Sesshomaru asked in a distant, quiet voice.

"She's possessed so she's coming to kill you," Inuyasha repeated with surprising patience. He watched Sesshomaru with a stern tenseness, ready to reach out and hold up is weakened, stunned brother. Sesshomaru, even though he was sitting, seemed unsteady. His shoulders moved, shaking, but his face stayed solemn, as if frozen.

Finally Sesshomaru blinked and said, "Bring in the physician for Saya."

"You." Inuyasha poked at Ginrei where she was seated along the opposite wall. "Go get him."

"I'm not leaving you here alone," Ginrei insisted. "You go to Lady Tsukiyume and tell her the physician is needed."

"Feh," Inuyasha growled. "Lazy." He was on his feet and had opened the door so quickly that he collided with Miroku who hadn't managed to move away from his position eavesdropping through the flimsy sliding door. He yelped with surprise and Miroku stumbled hard onto his backsides for the second time in that day. "What the hell, Miroku?"

Miroku heaved himself upright with barely a grimace. As usual his quick wit covered for his embarrassment with only the barest blush visible. "I was going to open the door for you, Inuyasha. I heard you call for the physician."

"Then go, monk. What are you fucking waiting for? Like I said, this ain't a pee—peanut show."

The monk gave an almost imperceptible bow. "Of course."

As Miroku hurried away, Inuyasha called out one last request to him: "Oh and make sure _everyone_ knows not to let Rin in!"

* * *

As it turned out, the precaution against Rin wasn't needed.

At the edge of the castle town, which was mostly deserted by the humans who anticipated nothing but death and destruction in the nearest future, Rin hesitated. She was staring at the castle, the tall spires, the tapered roofs, with a strange dark longing. Jishin sensed a disturbing aura around her host's body. She followed Rin's senses, searching the smaller buildings around herself with her eyes, ears, and her nose. There was little wind in the sheltered village, which would make her task easier—except that the human stench smothered everything else.

A man waddled out of a nearby shop and Jishin reacted to the movement, whipping around and striking like a snake. Rin's claws tore through his gut, ripping him in half. The man screamed on the ground, a wet sound full of the highest terror. But it was short lived as blood loss killed him. Rin flicked her claws with disgust, wiping them on her robes. The man had not been the source of the troubling aura.

"Rather pathetic, I should say," a smooth, deep voice rang out behind Rin.

She lunged at once for the sound, slashing through a wooden beam on her way. Wood splinters flew in her face, wood dust caught in her hair and stuck to the fresh blood on her robe. She saw nothing in the direction she had heard the speaker from. Rin wriggled her fingers, tensing the muscles. "Come out and face me."

A tiny noise, a foot on gravel, made her turn. From behind a single story building, opposite the one Rin had shredded, a white haired inuyoukai woman appeared. Thick, white fur encircled her shoulders; her kimono was blue with white butterflies, and her eyes bright gold.

Jishin recognized her, as did Rin. "Lady Shiroihana," Rin said. "I'm glad to see that you're all right…"

"Don't bother putting on a show for me, Jishin," Shiroihana muttered, glaring. "I can see right through you. In fact I've been waiting for this moment."

"Have you now?" Jishin asked, hissing with Rin's voice. "How foolish. I could use you as well as this body. Sesshomaru can no more kill his precious mother than his beloved mate."

Shiroihana's expression twisted, taking on bitterness. "You would be surprised."

"Nevertheless," Jishin insisted. "You are foolish for trying to stop me. Will you kill Lady Rin to protect your son and then fall victim to me yourself?"

"No," Shiroihana murmured, smiling. "I've only come for you." Gradually, she lifted her hand up to her shoulder and slipped it beneath the white fur there, into the folds of her kimono collar. When her pale, smooth hand reappeared her fingers encircled the sleek, black shape of a blade.

To Jishin's eyes the little black blade, carved from obsidian stone, glowed iridescently in a rainbow of oscillating colors. The power curling over and within the blade was invisible to Rin's eyes, but the threat was clear and immediate for Jishin. She drew back, cringing. "Where did you get that? How?"

Shiroihana ignored her questions. "The goddess Jishin has abused her powers and become unstable. She must be removed." Shiroihana inhaled sharply and shrugged her shoulders, as if puffing herself up to intimidate Jishin. "I am the instrument of that sentence."

"No." She shook her head and turned her back on the castle to sprint away from Shiroihana and the obsidian blade. Shiroihana flew after her, cutting her off and slashing with the blade. The knife caught Rin's obi, cutting halfway through the fabric.

In her desperation to flee, Jishin crashed into a taller building. The foundation cracked and shattered. The building toppled over, splitting apart. Some of it landed directly on top of Rin, the rest fell to one side or the other. Rin pushed, kicking and growling, until she had freed herself from the debris. She was still coughing and blinking the dust from her eyes when Shiroihana was on her.

Rin screamed with fear and rage, ducking Shiroihana's wide stroke with the blade.

"Stop resisting," Shiroihana called, taunting. "You know you have earned this fate!"

Rin snatched up a long wooden beam from the wreckage and tossed it at Shiroihana. The inuyoukai woman evaded it in a sideways lunge, giving Jishin enough time to run in a blur, streaking frantically through the town. Shiroihana followed her and the two inuyoukai women began a deadly ballet. Jishin kept houses and shops between herself and her pursuer, slowing her speed by whipping around sharp corners to lose Shiroihana as soon as she came too close for comfort.

A wall stood in Jishin's way. Rin leaped up and over it, landing deftly on her toes. She searched the ground around her. Pebbles, dirt, a tree branch some thirty feet away. Jishin focused on the dirt. She could not evade Shiroihana in Rin's body, but at the same time she was unwilling to leave it behind. Time was of the essence and if she gave up her hold she would have to find a way to retake Rin at a later time. The opportunity would probably never come again before Sesshomaru had recovered enough to defend himself.

The wall behind her exploded into a spray of white and brown dust from the bricks and wood. Rin cringed and shook her head, flinging away the fine dust covering from her face, her eyes, her lips, and her black hair.

Ghostly green light glowed through the thick air. A faint hissing sound reached Rin's ears. Rin knew what it was, but Jishin was new to the weapon. Her hesitation proved nearly fatal as Shiroihana's whip lashed out with a crack. It wrapped itself like a constrictor around Rin's neck, burning into the skin like flame.

Rin cried out and struggled, slashing at the air. When she struck the whip it singed her fingers and blackened her claws, but the spectral energy snapped. The burning touch of the whip around her neck vanished, falling away into ash.

"You degrade yourself and worsen the punishment by resisting," Shiroihana said, stepping through the mist of falling dust and debris from the wall. "But I must admit it is amusing. I did not know that goddesses could feel fear, Jishin. And I certainly didn't know they could fall into madness. Or was it simply boredom?"

Rin lifted her arm, pointing with a pinky finger. "Die!"

A wind stirred up, blasting away the whitish dust from the air and tugging on Shiroihana's hair and robes. The inuyokai woman narrowed her eyes in annoyance as dirt brushed against her skin and accumulated in her white hair and fur. She flicked out her hand, readying her whip again.

Pebbles flew at her then, pummeling Shiroihana's hand, her chest, and her face. She winced and covered her face with her free hand, puffing as she breathed. Rocks came then, smacking Shiroihana in the leg. She wobbled but didn't fall. The next few stones she avoided and steadied herself enough to set the whip alight in a neon green glow.

Rin lunged, tackling her. Shiroihana cried out with surprise as they landed on the ground together. Rin gripped the hand that had controlled the whip. Her grasp tightened down, wrenching Shiroihana's wrist until pain streaked through her arm. Shiroihana let out a roar of frustration, at last losing her composure.

Shiroihana kicked out with one leg, knocking Rin away. As Rin tumbled, Shiroihana went after her, snatching her by the neck with one hand. She snarled into Rin's face, exposing her teeth. "This is over." She was searching for the knife with her other hand, digging under her fluff.

Rin's face warped, changing shape slightly. The eyes flickered red to pink, then between brown and blue. Jishin couldn't speak with Shiroihana's tight hold on Rin's neck, but she didn't truly need to. With both hands, Rin reached out to Shiroihana's chest. With one she halted Shiroihana's search for the special black blade, with the other she probed under Shiroihana's robe, down to the skin. Jishin felt the bump of the collarbone and sank Rin's claws into the flesh.

The expression on Shiroihana's face wavered, registering pain. She tightened her hold on Rin's throat. "You've lost! Give in!"

Warm, slick blood gushed up around Rin's fingers and Jishin rejoiced as she picked out Shiroihana's heartbeat. She sent a pulse through Rin's body and into Shiroihana's chest. The inuyoukai woman gasped and her eyes sprang open wide. Her grip wavered on Rin's throat.

Jishin released the hand that Shiroihana had been using to search for the blade and ripped viciously into the arm that held Rin's throat. Shiroihana made a small yelping sound and let go. Blood splattered the grass.

Rin coughed, nearly gagging as she breathed. The physical discomfort that her host underwent barely touched Jishin, but she did feel the surge of new strength that filtered into her host's system. She lunged with both hands now, turning the tables on Shiroihana, cutting into the inuyoukai woman's chest.

"I am going to end you," Jishin snarled, dropping Rin's voice down an octave. "You are useless…"

Shiroihana's body shuddered as Jishin sent another pulse of energy through her, jolting her heart. She gasped hungrily at the air and her thoughts fragmented. The desire to shed her current shape to take on her true form rose up within her, powerful and undeniable. Shiroihana stifled it, focusing her mind and her body on the true task. It was counterintuitive, but Shiroihana ignored Rin's clawed hands as they cut deeper into the flesh of her chest, nicking the bones. Instead she dug frantically into her robes until one hand closed in a fist over the blade.

She struck clumsily with it, cutting into Rin's arm through the fabric of her kimono. Rin pulled away, screeching with pain in spite of the fact that the cut was small. She was on her hands and knees in the grass a foot from Shiroihana, cradling her hand and staring at it with quivering lips.

Shiroihana sat up and stabbed the blade into Rin's side, pushing the blade in deep. Rin yelled and swatted at her with shaking, uncoordinated hands. For Shiroihana the scene was pathetic. As blood bubbled up from the wound, Rin pawed at the grass and cried without shedding tears, taking rapid, shuddering breaths. The blade repelled her hand when she tried to yank it out, flickering in pinks, yellows, and blues.

Inwardly Jishin was fighting a losing battle with her host. The power of the blade was slow working but inevitable. First it snapped Rin's mind and soul out of the stupor that Jishin had forced onto her. The mixture of reactions came from the incomplete ability of either Rin or Jishin to control the body they inhabited. One had come awake into a world of blood and pain and wild fear, the other was wild with desperation and frustration, and both were unable to pull out the blade.

"What have you done?" Jishin asked through gritted teeth.

Shiroihana ignored her own wounds as she sat up and moved away from Rin a few feet to watch over the process. She offered no answer, unable to know who had asked it.

A shrill sound escaped Rin's throat, a violent and wordless cry. She fell onto her side in the grass, clutching around the wound as blood dribbled out in pulses, pushed by the pounding of her heart. The grass was cool on her forehead and then her cheek.

Every breath was agony, but gradually the world returned to Rin in all its fullness. She smelled the earth under her, the pollen in the air, the plaster of the bricks, and the sawdust of the wood from the shattered wall. The memory of her daughter's limp body floated to her and she tried to speak and found that the numbness of her mouth and tongue had gone. She was in control of speech at last. "Saya!" she called, though she knew her little girl was nowhere nearby.

Shiroihana stood firm and still as marble, stolid and distant.

"Saya," Rin repeated, quieter now. "Where is she?"

Shiroihana lifted her chin and sniffed once, but she refused to answer.

The blade glimmered blue-green, emanating a growing, expanding light. Rin's body began to shake violently, her eyes rolled up into her skull, showing only the bright whites. Her mouth opened wide in a silent scream.

Of its own volition, the blade disappeared completely into Rin's body, like a leaf slipping beneath the water's surface in some distant, peaceful pond. The light glowed from within and the blood that had seeped out crusted in an instant.

When the light died abruptly, Rin's body went slack. Her eyes closed. She was motionless, comatose.

Shiroihana scowled and at last lifted one hand to probe at the wounds that the possessed Rin had given her. In the center of her chest, where the base of her neck began and her collarbones met up, Rin's claws had dug a deep, oblong hole. It was bleeding in a slick, slimy ooze. Shiroihana sneered at the injury and flicked the blood from her fingers after she had finished investigating it. By the next day it would be closed over, and the day after that it would be nothing but a fresh, rosy scar.

With a sigh, Shiroihana walked over to Rin and nudged her gently with one foot. Rin didn't move. Shiroihana's shoulders sagged slightly and her frown deepened. Without removing her gaze from Rin on the grass, Shiroihana touched the necklace about her neck, the Meidou-seki. "You told me," she began, speaking to the air, "that this would not harm her, but it _would_ kill the goddess. I believe you were lying on multiple counts."

No sound pierced the afternoon air, only the faint wind rustling the leaves in the trees and the birds chirping distantly. A deer barked somewhere out of sight, from the shadow of the forest beyond.

"Fine," Shiroihana snapped. "I'll bring Sesshomaru his mate like this. At least in his current state he cannot kill me."

She knelt, fastidiously avoiding the patch of grass that Rin had bled on, and turned Rin onto her back. As she touched Rin's neck, feeling for a pulse, she paused and her brow furrowed with concentration. But it was not the pulse that she was concerned with. An uncertain, slow beat drummed on her fingertips, meaning that Rin was alive.

She cocked her head to one side and said, "What about her?"

Meidou-seki flickered on her chest, its dark, inky center glowing white. Shiroihana tugged on Rin's torn, slashed obi. Tucked between the folds, Shiroihana found a small, round stone. She examined it with narrowed eyes, detecting the energy it produced, the tingling it started in her fingers. _Fox magic._

Shiroihana pushed the stone into her own kimono with a light, humorless smile. "Interesting." She slipped one arm under Rin's legs, the other under her neck and hefted the other inuyoukai woman up, cradled against her. Blood stained her kimono immediately and Shiroihana wore a look of disgust as she walked off, going back through the broken, shattered wall, heading for the castle and her son.


	34. Exiled

A/N: I am VERY sorry for my long absence. It was unexpected. Had a little weird writer's block, mostly because I didn't have much time. Visited my boyfriend the last two weekends, working on applying for my English MA, also juggling 17 or so credits and considering graduation. Just...busy I guess. Not as busy as I have been sometimes but...yeah I'm lame. Anyway, I hope this pleases! It's long-ish. Oh another problem I had was a computer meltdown this last weekend. Had to have it re-imaged, which is when the university basically erases everything and starts over. I saved all my documents and stuff but I'm still getting things fixed again, like iTunes which is a BITCH. Pardon my French, ahem... and I'm also freaking out about the stomach flu since my sister had it last Sunday and so i'm scared to go home...Did I ever mention to you all that I am emetophobic, as in the irritational fear of vomiting or others vomiting? Yea...

Anyway...enough of my blabbering. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own them.

Last chapter: IY and Sess met each other and IY gave Saya over to him. Sess was very concerned about Saya and called for a physician, at least after he tried to get everyone to leave and failed. IY got everyone but Hanone and Ginrei out. Meanwhile Shiroihana accosted Rin/Jishin, fought with her before she reached the castle, and stabbed her in the side with a special blade. Then she discovered Saya's white stone and carried Rin away to hand her off to Sess.

**Exiled**

**

* * *

  
**

The physician arrived promptly. He was a little wiry man who stared at the floor while he walked, and never seemed to look directly at any of the inuyoukai or hanyou in the room, even the one he was supposedly treating. Inuyasha watched the man with burgeoning irritation. Why would Tsukiyume or Miroku or whoever it had been that called him, have summoned a _human_ physician? The patient was hanyou. A demon of some kind would be better qualified.

Sesshomaru had moved away from Saya, distancing himself from all that was happening around him, even within the same room. Inuyasha was the one that hovered over the doctor, watching his every move, which was all done in slow-motion.

"The child seems to be unconscious," the physician concluded some ten minutes after his arrival.

Inuyasha snorted. "Yeah—now wake her up, idiot!" He noticed Ginrei watching him from across the room where she was cuddling Sesshomaru's other daughter, the pureblooded one whose name Inuyasha didn't know. He returned her gaze with a glare. "What are you staring at?"

"I can see why Lord Sesshomaru doesn't like you," Ginrei told him icily.

"Oh fuck off, he doesn't like anyone but Rin," Inuyasha growled.

Ginrei said nothing in reply, which was a stroke of luck because at that moment the physician decided to speed up his act. The old man pulled his satchel closer and produced a small glass jar with a cork inside. The liquid inside the vial was thick and a light brown. As the doctor swirled it, Inuyasha saw that it was also viscous, sticky. He turned it upside down, dowsing the porous structure of the cork, and then wrapped his gnarled fingers around the top of the little vial, trying to pull it out.

Impatient, and suspicious, Inuyasha pushed up close next to the old man and pawed at his wrinkled hands. "Lemme do th—"

The cork popped out with a hollow noise and immediately a noxious, foul stench made its way up Inuyasha's nostrils. His eyes watered and he pulled back from the doctor, gagging. "What the fuck is that shit?"

In the corner, wrapped inside troubled thoughts, Sesshomaru lifted his head, listening.

"It is a substance that will wake her," the physician replied. Without waiting for some consent or answer from anyone in the room, the old man lowered the cork down to Saya's nose and wafted it back and forth, letting the child's slow breathing take in the stinky stuff. For a time there was nothing and Inuyasha felt something hard and cold growing in his chest at the thought that Saya was going to waste away in an unending sleep, but then her little face crinkled with disgust.

"Well it's about time," Inuyasha muttered.

He looked toward Sesshomaru, ready to make sure his brother knew Saya was all right, but the physician gestured wildly at Saya and stammered, "Turn her on her side!"

Inuyasha moved quickly, pulling on Saya's shoulder, manipulating it until she was lying on her side with her back to where Sesshomaru sat. "Why were you freaking ou—"

Saya answered his question when her eyes popped open and her shoulders heaved. She gagged, spitting onto the floor. The stink of stomach acids made Inuyasha cover his nose with his sleeve. The physician nodded approvingly while he stared off at the door. "That usually happens too along with waking."

Saya was shaking on the floor and whimpering. She tried to scoot away from the little pile of vomit, but her arms and legs seemed unable to perform the way she needed. Soon the whimpering had turned into choking as she began to sob.

"Ah shit," Inuyasha cursed. He fought off the desire to smack the physician in the back of the head as punishment. "Look what you made her do! Get out!"

"I must check her reflexes." The old man reached for Saya with suddenly swift, firm hands and fingers. He grasped Saya's waist and lifted her, pulling her toward himself and Inuyasha. As Inuyasha bristled to one side, the physician poked at Saya's arms and legs and then at her face. He brushed her eyelids, trying to see into her eye. Saya struggled, pushing his hands away and baring her small teeth.

"Let her go—she's awake!" Inuyasha took hold of Saya, getting her away from the physician. Saya reacted to his scent and accepted him at once, clinging to his haori like a baby monkey and burying her face into his chest and stomach.

"I have not ascertained why she was unconscious," the physician cautioned. "She may simply fall back into the depths of her sleep in a short time without proper treatment."

"She's fine," Inuyasha snapped. "Get out. And you—" He pointed to Ginrei. "Get something to clean up the puke."

Ginrei's expression was cold but impassive, a good mimicry of her husband's on any other day. "I am not a servant."

Inuyasha growled impatiently. "Then Miroku. I know you're listening out there! _You_ go get someone to clean up the mess!" There was no reply from the door but a moment later Inuyasha heard footsteps retreating quietly, with as much dignity and silence as the walker—probably the monk—could muster.

Saya was shivering convulsively in Inuyasha's arms, her little body as tense as a piano string. She peeked at the room around her cautiously with only one squinted eye. Her uncle's scent was the first thing she noticed through the bitter stink and taste of her own vomit, but the strange room, the changed scenery, and the physician's probing fingers were harsh violations into her young mind. She tried to speak but the words were breathless and whispery. "Wh-what hap—"

"You're safe," Inuyasha assured her. "We brought you to Sesshomaru. To your dad."

Instead of being comforted at the news, Saya's shaking increased. She whimpered incoherently with fear. The last thing she could recall of her father had been his shape, his powerful arms, holding her by the throat. It was the greatest terror of her life, to stare her father in the eye and feel the strength draining from her limbs as his hands throttled her. The father she had idolized and worshipped even if from afar, the protector who bore her same white hair and the crescent moon in her forehead.

She sobbed, shrieking shrilly.

Inuyasha cringed and patted her roughly, trying to stop the sound. "What's the matter with you? Saya—cut it out. Are you hurt? What's wrong?"

Sesshomaru's back had straightened. His daughter's crying drew him out of the fog that had descended over his senses. He glared at Inuyasha with an abrupt fury. "You have harmed her. _Release her!"_

"I haven't hurt her!" Inuyasha tried to get Saya to quiet enough that she could answer him, but she stayed glued to his chest. He grumbled and cursed with irritation. "Saya, stop crying!"

Sesshomaru stood and crossed the short distance between himself and his half brother with stiff, wobbly legs. "Release her!"

"Back off!" Inuyasha barked, hopping up before Sesshomaru could reach him and moving across the room to evade him. Saya held onto him tightly and kept her eyes closed, but the motion jostled her enough to force away the terror of her memory. She listened to the voices that erupted around her.

"You must turn her over to Lord Sesshomaru!" Ginrei said. "Saya is _his_ daughter."

"That's what I came here to do, bitch! Get off my back about it," Inuyasha hollered. He had dropped into a crouched position near the door, repositioning Saya, pulling on her tiny hands where they had fisted in his haori, as secure as if she were a parasitic tick rooted in his skin. "She's scared to death so back off!"

Sesshomaru ignored the hanyou and closed in on him. Inuyasha backed into the door, making the wood creak and the screens crinkle. "Saya," he called, clawing at her with blunt nails.

Saya turned with his touch and stared. The unmarked face, the darkened skin, the brown-amber eyes were almost unfamiliar to her. She flashed her teeth at him. "Don't touch me!"

"She doesn't recognize you," Inuyasha snarled. "Back off!"

Emotion made Sesshomaru's brow furrow, a thick crease between his eyebrows. Briefly the feeling was loss, even despair that Rin's daughter, his firstborn, had rejected him and she was _unable_ to identify him as her father. But that emotion faded, replaced and smothered by the patriarchal rage of an inuyoukai lord. He grabbed Inuyasha's sleeve and gave a jerk, knocking the hanyou around weakly. "Release her!"

"She doesn't know you!"

A few feet away, sheltered in Ginrei's arms, Hanone started to cry pathetically.

Saya reacted to that sound, twisting her head around as far as she could to peer past the strange man that was trying to pull her from Inuyasha's arms. At once she recognized Ginrei and the lumpy, clumsy bundle of clothing and hair that was crying in her arms. She let out a little gasp. "Hanone? Sister?"

Inuyasha slapped Sesshomaru's greedy hands away, but the determined father would not be put off. He pulled on Saya's shoulder and made the little girl shriek with fresh alarm. Inuyasha's ears laid flat at the sound and he growled, losing his temper. "You bastard—get your hands off her!"

The hanyou lunged and impacted on Sesshomaru's shoulders, pushing him over. Sesshomaru did not cry out as he fell, but he landed heavily and Ginrei rushed to help him. With the wind knocked out of him, Sesshomaru's face was pale and his muscles quivered as he accepted Ginrei's arm as a steadying crutch. He rose to his feet and drew in a deep breath. Maintaining his composure by squashing emotions took all of his energy. His shoulders slumped and he failed to notice that his wig, made of real human black hair, was askew slightly on his head as he glared at his brother.

Inuyasha bit back the infuriated words that had been ready to rush out and assault Sesshomaru when he saw the cockeyed wig. It was a sharp reminder of the suffering his half-brother had undergone. A sliver of shame colored his face when he thought of how easily he could have broken even the largest bones in Sesshomaru's frail, human body.

"Saya," Sesshomaru called.

The girl did not turn her head or acknowledge him with words, but Inuyasha felt her small body tighten against his chest.

"You must obey me—I am your father."

Saya whimpered, "Don't let him take me…"

"Saya," Inuyasha addressed her in a growl, "this _is_ your father." He brought his hand up awkwardly, aware that Sesshomaru was watching with open disapproval, and stroked her hair to still her shaking as much as he could. "This is your father. You can trust me, Saya."

"Father attacked me!" Saya shrieked. She tugged on Inuyasha's haori, trying to open it enough that she could crawl inside, hiding from her audience.

"That wasn't him," Inuyasha murmured, comprehending Saya's crazed reaction at last. "That was a shape-shifter. This is _really_ your father. He's been sick but he's here…"

The door clattered, sliding open. Miroku was on the other side. He bowed and muttered apologies as he snuck into the room, slipping past Inuyasha who was nearly blocking the passageway completely. He knelt with a rag where Saya had vomited and began to scrub with a pinched expression.

Saya had tracked Miroku's appearance and his progress. Now she risked turning that same attention to the human that was supposedly her father. She saw the alien features and although some were similar, his scent was distant and distinctly human. Where was the white hair like her own? His eyes were too dark, not like the sunrise, but like dirt. His forehead had some faint discoloration, but it looked more like a bruise, as if made by a circular shape like the bottom edge of a bamboo pole. She turned her head back around and nuzzled deeper into Inuyasha's haori.

"Saya," Inuyasha insisted. He prevented her from crawling into his haori by pushing his palm down onto his chest, forcibly keeping the material closed. "Please, this _is your father…"_

She tilted her head upwards and stared into her uncle's golden eyes. After half a second she shook her head solemnly. "Father isn't human." Her chin wrinkled. "It's the shape-shifter, Uncle. Don't let him take me!"

"But—" Inuyasha motioned roughly at Ginrei and Hanone, who was still crying faintly. "That's, uh, whatever her name is over there, and the pup, your sister—they're fine. They believe me—don't you?"

This troubled Saya and she blinked with fresh, hot tears. Her lips trembled. "I don't know!" She yanked insistently on his haori. "Don't let them take me!"

Suddenly Sesshomaru interrupted, ordering, "Go."

Both Inuyasha and Ginrei looked to him with confusion. Ginrei cleared her throat and asked, "Lord Sesshomaru?"

Sesshomaru's face was deadpan, but his eyes were narrowed into slits. He turned, pivoting unsteadily on his heels, showing his back to Inuyasha, Ginrei, Hanone, and Saya alike. "Inuyasha, take Saya and leave this room."

Miroku, on his hands and knees over the now spotless floor, paused in his cleaning motions, tense and listening. The mess had been scrubbed clean already, though the smell remained.

"What do you—" Inuyasha didn't get a chance to finish.

"Take Saya and go!" Sesshomaru repeated in a harsher voice, the words tightly clipped. "Stay with Tsukiyume. Go!"

Inuyasha hesitated. "We can convince her, Sesshomaru. It will just take a—"

"_Go!"_ Sesshomaru yelled.

Miroku was at Inuyasha's side with the dirty rag in one hand and grabbing at the hanyou's elbow with the other. He muttered, "We should do as Lord Sesshomaru orders."

"But…" Inuyasha's ears swung forward and backward with consternation.

The monk guided Inuyasha out of the room and slid the door closed behind him.

Alone with Ginrei and Hanone, Sesshomaru let out a ragged breath. Ginrei reached for his shoulder, offering physical and emotional support with her presence, but Sesshomaru shrugged her off. "You leave as well."

Ginrei pulled backward as if he had spat at her. "Have I done something to offend Lord Se—"

"Go outside with Hanone and stand guard!" he shouted at her.

Stiffly, stricken, Ginrei took a step back from him and bowed formally. She could not see his face, only his back and the edge of one cheek. Yet her sharp nose had caught the scent of unshed tears. Wordlessly, she took Hanone and left her husband alone in the room to mourn.

* * *

With no resistance, aside from the wide-eyed stares of human maids and servants, Shiroihana passed through Shimofuri's castle. Normally a visitor would have been escorted to the audience room to be received by Lord Shimofuri or Tsukiyume. Yet as Shiroihana had appeared on the premise with Rin's limp form in her arms, tradition and usual protocol were tossed out the window. Orders had come trickling down that no visitors seeking an audience with Sesshomaru were to be admitted, and in particular the servants were to be on the lookout for Rin.

The steward tried to lead Shiroihana to the audience room, and he tried to tell a maid to rush for Tsukiyume, but Shiroihana didn't wait for him to do any of it. As the steward slid open the door to a receiving room, Shiroihana stepped right past him and the doorway, proceeding to a flight of stairs. The steward followed Shiroihana up and up, always begging her pardon, but Shiroihana ignored him until she reached the level with Sesshomaru's room.

She found the room attended by Ginrei. The young inuyoukai woman was sitting in front of the door with Hanone slumped in her lap asleep. As Ginrei looked up and saw Shiroihana approaching, her first expression was one of anger. Her lip curled up and her eyes narrowed. But then she saw Rin's body, jostled with each of Shiroihana's steps, and her mouth fell open with surprise and fear.

"Is she—did you…?"

"Of course she's alive," Shiroihana muttered, scowling. "How stupid do you think I am, Ginrei?"

At that reproof, Ginrei drew back, stiffening. With no small amount of ice tainting the news, she said, "We've had some unexpected visitors. A certain bastard son of your husband's. He said that La—that Rin," Ginrei stopped, lowering her gaze with a mixture of shame and rankling frustration. She had started to give Rin a title, but then thought better of it, letting her bitterness show through unrestrainedly. Yet Rin's limp body, bouncing in Shiroihana's arms, was hardly deserving of her hatred. She pressed on anyway, recalling with fresh hatred how fast Sesshomaru would toss her aside for the once-mortal woman in Shiroihana's arms. "Rin is possessed. She's come to kill—"

"You're going to waste my time telling me what I already know," Shiroihana muttered. "Don't bother. I have cleansed her of her possession."

Shiroihana had drawn in close enough that Ginrei could smell her and the unconscious passenger in her arms. She opened her mouth with alarm as the stink of blood hit her. "She's covered in—"

"It was necessary to purge that damned goddess," Shiroihana snarled. She stood before Ginrei, seemingly ready to proceed through the door to deliver Rin's body to Sesshomaru. Ginrei scooted backward, pressing her shoulders to the closed screen door, blocking Shiroihana's path if the other inuyoukai woman chose to go ahead.

"I can't let you go on. Lord Sesshomaru asked to be left alone and it's not safe to…"

"I have no intention of seeing my son," Shiroihana said. As Ginrei watched with bafflement, Shiroihana knelt and laid Rin onto the floor delicately. She checked the place where the blade had slipped into Rin's body. Under the torn, bloodied fabric Rin's skin glowed weakly, as if she had swallowed fireflies. The wound had closed in a nasty confusion of dried blood.

"You're going to leave her here?" Ginrei demanded. In her lap Hanone sprang awake, reacting to her mother's tensing and the sound of the women speaking around her. "What am I supposed to tell him? What have you done to her?"

Shiroihana moved Rin's head about, ignoring Ginrei's questions. The skin was pallid, her markings faded. A deep rumbling voice rippled through Shiroihana's mind like water, speaking only into her ears, into her consciousness. _"There is no need for concern. She will sleep deeply while her soul fights out Jishin in the spirit world. Leave her. You must find Shimofuri."_

Touching Rin's silky, black hair with reverence, Shiroihana withdrew, releasing a long sigh. Her attention moved to Ginrei and then, in a quick flicking motion, to Hanone. The meidou-seki necklace resting amidst the folds of her kimono and the fluffy cover of her white shoulder-fur, felt abruptly warm and heavy.

"Rin will recover. Have the hanyou girl watch over her. It would be safest to keep her away from Sesshomaru until he has recovered more of his strength." She rose up and rolled her shoulders. The scent of Rin's blood followed her, a sharp, metallic odor that made Shiroihana scowl. Her robes and the white fluff were stained with it. Meidou-seki's weight at her chest made Shiroihana's movements slow and fatigued.

"_Find Shimofuri. You must orchestrate the adoption, the annulment of Sesshomaru's current marriage, and the promise of the union with Rin."_

A muscle in Shiroihana's neck stood out tautly. She ignored Ginrei's stare and increasingly high, frustrated voice as she demanded to know more. Instead Shiroihana watched the closed sliding door, the gold leaf, the reddish tint of the wood, and imagined her son behind it. The weight of Meidou-seki increased, combining with her own emotions. Absently, she lifted one hand and stroked the white fluff. The smooth, silky strands were very similar, though not as long, as Sesshomaru's hair. She recalled her son's tiny face as he had suckled in long ages passed, his golden eyes warm and tender. She had developed the habit of _touching_ with her hands during that time. Before Sesshomaru's birth she had been only a cold, calculating matriarch. She had not changed that outward behavior, it gave her power that not even Inutaisho had been able to control or crush. Only the golden luminescence in her son's eyes, like the first glow of the breaking light at dawn, had been able to melt something within her.

She kept it hidden. Only the tiny tremor in her slender, clawed fingers as she rubbed the white fluff at her shoulders belied the world of turmoil hidden under her skin.

"Take care of Rin," she ordered and turned, starting to walk off.

"Where are you going?" Ginrei called, astounded at the strange behavior. "What about Sesshomaru? And—" she stumbled, stammering, "—Saya, what about Saya? The illegitimate one, the bastard son, he has Saya and she won't…"

"Sesshomaru asked that I leave him," Shiroihana replied without turning back. "He must fight this battle alone now." The thought of her first granddaughter, the hanyou by Rin that she had never met before, briefly slowed Shiroihana's tread, but she knew that she would not, and could not stop. Despite her curiosity she had no interest in dealing with Inutaisho's bastard son, the cause of his very downfall, and even her hanyou granddaughter seemed more burdensome than promising. She could not fight Sesshomaru's battles, or even support him, if he did not wish it. He had ordered her away before, and she would follow those instructions, helping him from afar. Sesshomaru had never approved or allowed either parent to smother him with affection. And so Shiroihana would be banished away from him once more until time or circumstance brought them together.

Now her duty to her son lied with forcing the alliance, by negotiating with Shimofuri, by making sure that the Middle Lands emerged whole and complete from Jishin's war.

* * *

A short, bald man tapped at the screen, making everyone in the room turn at once to look at the partly ajar door and the exposed dimness of the hallway beyond. It was a large room with a table in it, designed for eating though at times it had been used as a place for deliberation and discussion during Taikokajin's time.

Now it was being used as an impromptu guest dining room. The few human servants that had remained, in spite of the looming battle somewhere outside in the Nanka, brought tea and snacks, sliced vegetables and fruits, the best they could provide on short notice and with so few workers.

Shippo poured the tea instead of letting Tsukiyume do it. As the hostess, sitting at the head of the table in her brother's stead, Tsukiyume twitched nervously, her ears swinging about on the top of her head. Her mind was war-torn literally, caught up with wondering about her brother while simultaneously facing her unexpected guests and struggling with how best to deal with them. Shippo alone was easy; he was her friend, even a confidant. The others left her uncertain. She had seen Inuyasha and Miroku's strength, and the hanyou's impatience and harsh tongue kept her tense. As for Saya the tiny girl was inseparable from Inuyasha, though she shivered and reached ravenously for the fruits and vegetables.

The sound of the bald man at the door sent Tsukiyume's fingers to her throat in a nervous gesture, tapping the bare skin there. "What is it?"

"Your presence is needed, my lady."

Tsukiyume's ears fell back, listening unconsciously to her guests. "I'm…" she searched for the right term, pausing as her mind worked. "…entertaining."

The bald man bowed to the floor again. "The matter is rather urgent. Lady Shiroihana was here. She brought Lady Rin…"

"Who the hell let them in?" Inuyasha blustered. "Are you people deaf?" He was on his feet before Tsukiyume or the servant could answer him. The hanyou ordered Saya to stay with Miroku and Shippo, but the tiny girl, still traumatized, shook her head fervently.

She tugged on his hakama. "No! Uncle Inuyasha! Don't leave me!"

"You'll be safe with Miroku and Shippo," Inuyasha reassured her. The harshness from moments ago fled as Saya's touch stalled him, as her plaintive entreaty gripped his attention from the threat that Rin posed.

"Lady Shiroihana brought the lady unconscious," the bald man said.

"Unconscious?" Tsukiyume repeated. Inuyasha twitched one ear in the direction of the servant but otherwise kept all his focus on Saya.

"I do not believe she is a threat. Lady Ginrei said you are to look after her."

"She ain't right in the head," Inuyasha put in, snarling. "We can't trust her."

"Shiroihana brought her," Tsukiyume murmured, more to herself than to the others. "She's no fool."

"Who?" Inuyasha barked.

"You can stay here with Saya," Tsukiyume said. To the servant she said, "Bring Lady Ginrei to accompany the guests. I will go to Lady Rin."

"Hey!" Inuyasha barked. "Are you deaf too? Rin is possessed! She wants Sesshomaru dead!"

"Stay here," Tsukiyume ordered him over her shoulder. Before the hanyou could explode into expletives, she had disappeared, following the servant into the hall. Her ears stayed back-turned, overhearing Inuyasha and the others. Then, suddenly, a flash of red-brown streaked in from her side.

Tsukiyume halted and gasped as Shippo materialized before her in his boyish form. He offered her a close-lipped smile and searched over her with his bright green eyes. "Can I come with you? You know…to make sure you're safe."

The bald man had turned, waiting uneasily on his mistress. Tsukiyume nodded curtly to Shippo. As they began walking once more she said, "I don't think Lady Shiroihana would have brought Rin into the castle if she were still possessed."

"But how could she tell?" Shippo asked, trotting along with loud, swift feet on the hardwood floors. His feet should have been quieter than Tsukiyume's but they weren't because of his claws and the stiff, callused pads on the bottom of his soles.

"She's Shiroihana—I think she would know somehow."

They moved up a short flight of stairs to the doorway outside of Sesshomaru's room. It was closed and guarded by Ginrei. Laying a few feet away from the other inuyoukai woman was Rin, her clothing bloodstained, her hair coming undone and laying askew at every angle.

"What happened to her?" Tsukiyume demanded, kneeling immediately and rolling Rin around to face her. She touched Rin's cheek, slapping it gently at first and then with more strength when the woman failed to react. "Lady Rin? Rin? Wake up!"

"Shiroihana has gone mad," Ginrei muttered. "She said you should look after her until she wakes up. Then she left. She didn't even stay when I mentioned Saya."

"She knew that Rin was possessed?" Tsukiyume asked, looking up from Rin's pale skin.

Ginrei nodded. "The crazy bitch," she snarled. "Do you see the blood? She claimed she purged the goddess from her that way. Nonsense."

Tsukiyume made a face, pursing her lips tightly. "If it was Lady Shiroihana that said that—I will believe her."

Ginrei was silent as Tsukiyume awkwardly pushed her hands under Rin's body and lifted her up with a weak grunt. She maneuvered her shoulder, rolling it so that Rin's head rested against her chest instead of lolling out. "Shippo?"

"I'm coming with you," the kit replied at once.

Tsukiyume started walking with a wide gait, supporting Rin's extra weight. Shippo's padded feet and claws clicked on the floor behind her.

At the doorway Ginrei watched with a bitter expression and then, as if defeated, lowered her head down and let out a long breath.

* * *

Rin opened her eyes and sucked hungrily at the air with her mouth. The air was heavy and thick. She saw her own hand lying next to her. It was colorless. She wiggled her fingers and lifted up the hand, turning it over to look at the palm. A slimy, gray-black sludge covered her skin. It gleamed wetly. Rin moved her head and felt the same wetness on her cheek, heard it squelch in her ear.

The colorless, forlorn world, the misty, thick air, and the mud sent a rush of fear through her. She sat up, breathing hard on the difficult air. Dark stains covered her clothing, but without color Rin couldn't tell if they were blood or mud. Her last memories swarmed up: waking with the gut-wrenching pain, the throb and pulse from the knife imbedded in her side, and the stink of her own blood.

_No…_

Rin got to her feet and whirled around, taking in the grayness of the world around her. The pine trees in the distance lining the hill were almost black. The sky was a rich, dark gray and the grass a duller, brighter shade of gray. She wiped the sludge from one hand and pawed at her cheek with the other. _Did I really die? _

She touched her ears, smearing the mud on them accidentally. They were pointed, meaning she was not human. Yet, if that was true, why was she back in the human's spirit realm?

Her side ached, a distant but still fierce pain. Rin dug at it, opening her torn obi and moving aside her robes to look inside. Her mouth fell open as she saw the inner robe. It was brightly colored with the embroidery that had been there in life. Pinks, yellows, and blues. Then a spot of red caught her attention. Rin probed it with her clawed fingers, brushing at the fabric. The sensation of wetness and hot, stabbing warmth shocked her into gasping.

It was blood.

A short, quick cry broke the eternal grayness.

Rin turned around, searching the hills, the dark, misty shapes of the trees. "Who's there?"

Another sound came, a sort of pathetic whimpering. It dropped in tenor, dipping into a deeper range that struck a familiar cord in Rin's memory. The sound echoed over the trees, bouncing like a child's ball. As a human Rin might've been confused by it, but now she moved instinctually toward the hill. The sound had come from beyond it or behind it, in a spot hidden from her view.

Her legs worked with surprising speed and strength. Although Rin fought to breathe the thicker air, her head stayed clear, her mind sharp. As she crested the hill she stopped, staring down into the tiny little valley on the other side.

A small woman was halfway sitting, grasping her side, the same place where Rin had been stabbed. Her hair was a light shade of gray, messy as it spilled over her shoulders in an uncombed, childish tangle. She was clothed in a long, gray-white shift that was smeared with the thick mud on one side. A different shade of gray stained the side where she had been stabbed.

Rin touched her own wound and felt it smart slightly. Her wound was identical to the woman's, except Rin handled her pain calmly and there wasn't as much blood. Rin glanced down at her fingertips and saw her blood coloring her skin. It wasn't gray—it was a deep crimson. She blinked and rubbed it between her fingers, feeling the texture, gritting as it tried to clot. If she concentrated she could almost smell it…

The woman at the bottom of the hill saw Rin and let out a yelp like an animal. She rose unsteadily to her feet and began to stumble away.

Rin saw the small woman's lithe form, the lighter gray shade of her hair, and gradually recognition dawned inside her. She recalled the weight of her daughter's body in her arms, the hopelessness as she had passed Saya to Inuyasha and Miroku. Jishin's touch as she took over her, the way the world had spun away, fading into nothing, a coerced sleep.

Now she was in the spirit realm, bleeding red blood. What had happened?

She sprinted after Jishin and was surprised again by the ease with which she moved about. She caught up to the flailing, unsteady Jishin and stood before her at a safe distance. "Jishin?"

The goddess's form was less woman and more child. She made sounds like a sobbing girl, but there were no tears on her face. Her hair was matted with mud and another substance that Rin suspected was blood. The white shift she was wearing was far from her usual showy regalia. The heavy stains almost inspired sympathy, but Rin ignored the unusualness of the sight in favor of answers.

"What's going on?" It seemed like a feeble question, but Rin could think of only one other thing to ask and giving it voice was too much for her to think about without letting her mind fragment in grief. _Did I die?_

Jishin was gripping her bleeding side. Her shoulders heaved. "Yes, you have died," she snarled.

Rin forced herself to stay still, unwilling to react. "Why are you here? Why are you bleeding?" _Can goddesses bleed?_ Perhaps Rin was delirious. The spirit realm was known for its tricksters. Children and wandering adults often strayed into the spirit world when a mischievous youkai like a kitsune offered to guide them out of the wilderness. Rin struggled to keep her mind sharp, to avoid walking into some kind of trap that would keep her in the land of the dead if she didn't really belong there.

The longer Rin stared at the goddess, the more she felt certain she truly had imagined her up. It was a dream…

"It's not a dream," Jishin muttered.

Rin took a step closer to the goddess and flexed her hands experimentally. She felt strength bubbling through her but held herself back from Jishin, uncertain of her.

Jishin backpedaled, doubling the distance between herself and Rin with noticeable fear. It warped her face, distorting and wrinkling it.

Every other time that Rin had tried to fight Jishin the goddess had been incorporeal, untouchable unless she actually wanted to be. She could hold onto Rin or Saya or anyone that she wanted, strangling them while their blows hit nothing but air. Jishin was like the clouds that gathered in the heavens during the plum rains, highly visible, a powerful presence that could kill at will, but unreachable.

She was nothing like that now.

_It must be a dream,_ she thought.

Jishin let out a harsh cry of pain. She was staring down at her side. Her mouth hung open, chewing at the air.

"You're in pain," Rin observed, stunned with shock.

The goddess turned her back on Rin and started to run. Her panting was heavy. Mud slurped sickeningly as her feet plopped in and out of it.

Refusing to lose sight of the only other presence in the spirit realm, whether real or imagined, Rin darted after her. Unlike Jishin, Rin's feet moved lightly over the mud. Jishin was barefoot while Rin wore white split-toe socks that had matched her sandals in the living world. Although the soles of her feet were covered in the foul muck of the mud, Rin hardly felt the suck and pull of it in the same way that Jishin did as she struggled.

It was as if they had exchanged places. Jishin was now the mortal, struggling for every breath and every footfall while Rin was the goddess, gliding over the world, weightless as the mists.

Yet when Rin closed in on Jishin and snatched the smaller woman's arm, her flesh met with Jishin's, and both of them felt very real and solid.

Jishin squealed with panic. "That bitch Shiroihana has killed you! She has sent you here! She has bound us together for eternity in this realm!"

It was chatter, unthinking, but Rin cocked her head, remembering something amidst the pain from her wound, a moment when she had opened her eyes and made out the white and blue form of Sesshomaru's mother. Her long flowing hair, her blue kimono, the puff of her fur.

Rin tugged on Jishin and found with a mixture of astonishment and disbelief that the goddess toppled over, falling into the mud face first. As Jishin coughed and sputtered, gagging, Rin knelt and peered into the black muck that had covered her face. Her eyes narrowed critically. "Why am I here with you?"

"I told you!" Jishin blustered, spitting. "Shiroihana killed you…"

"Then you must be a dream." Rin stood up and drew in a deep breath. _A dream would not care if I killed it. I know there's better company in this realm…_ She looked upward, to the unyielding, monotonous shade of gray in the sky. Was that cloud cover, or was that the spirit realm's version of blue? As if in answer to her silent wondering, Rin heard and felt the vibration of thunder ripple through the air. It was a melodic sound that filled her with a cold, detached peace.

Suddenly, without giving any warning, Rin struck out with her foot, knocking Jishin's small body down. The force of the blow was enough to send Jishin rolling. The mud pulled at her hungrily, slowing her roll and dampening the blow. Jishin howled wildly with pain. She got herself upright enough that she could scamper on three limbs while also clutching at the stab wound in her side.

She was running away in terror, in fear, as if her life or her existence were at stake. _A dream doesn't fear for its life._

With a sudden burst of fury, Rin took off after the ailing goddess and snatched her up by the shoulder. Flesh met with flesh. Rin clutched Jishin's neck and lifted her up off the ground. Jishin made guttural choking sounds and pawed at Rin's arm. Her legs flailed and her face wrinkled unrecognizably with her struggle with both breathing and dealing with pain.

Rin gave her a shake and Jishin's body fell halfway limp. Rin loosened her grip, letting Jishin breathe easier. "Tell me what's going on here!"

"Shiroihana…!"

"She stabbed me," Rin said. "I already know that. Am I dead?"

Jishin hacked. "Yes."

"If that's true why are you here? Why are _you_ afraid?" Rin tightened her fist, closing off Jishin's airway. A taste of suffocation might encourage her to answer Rin's questions. "Am I really dead?"

"No!"

Rin dropped Jishin to the ground. Her shoulders moved up and down as she drew in a deep breath. Her heart had started to pound like a hammer on her ribs. A tremor of weakness moved through her arms and legs. Jishin was panting in the mud at her feet. "What did Shiroihana really do?"

"Exiled me!" Jishin wailed.

"Exiled?" Rin repeated.

Sprinkles, tiny raindrops, flicked onto Rin's face. She blinked and licked her lips. The water had a taste of salt, like tears. The taste made her remember Saya, of kissing away her daughter's tears.

"Yes," Jishin spat. "I am nothing now. Nothing more than one of the miserable spirits walking this realm."

The hurried way Jishin had said it hinted at deception. Rin ignored it for now, choosing to keep Jishin talking rather than tearing her to shreds for the truth. She asked, "How do I get out of here?"

"I don't know," Jishin muttered. Her face was hidden from Rin's field of view. "Leave me to my fate, go find your own way."

The rain had picked up, though the droplets were no bigger than uncooked rice kernels. Rin felt her hair growing heavier, in fact her whole body had begun to feel as if were a sponge, sucking in the raindrops. Her hair fell out of its restraints and landed in a tangled mess about her shoulders. For a second the sight of it distracted Rin. In only a few days it had grown out far enough that if she were naked it could have covered her breasts.

A male voice came from behind Rin then and she turned round, searching for the source of it. The speaker wasn't hard to find, rather he was the opposite of discreet.

"You are lovely, aren't you? Even here with the dead."

Jishin hissed down in the mud, alarmed by the newcomer's arrival. "You," she howled. She crawled backward from him and from Rin on all-fours, scuttling like a crab.

Rin had eyes only for the male stranger. He shone with a gold light, a beautiful luminescence, like the halo around a full moon. His form was indistinct, but Rin recognized him at once. She shook her head in disbelief. "Lord Inutaisho…?"

* * *

_Sorry for the cliffhanger but I figured it was long enough and now was a good spot to stop it. And I wanted to take a nap so...Hope you all enjoy it! Sorry again for my long absence!!_


	35. Moonlight

A/N: Well over the weekend I did battle with a certain Virtumonde Trojan computer virus, some strain called H. With some help from my boyfriend I downloaded MBAM, a really fabulous malware-search-and-destroy software. It caught this virus where no other program had managed to completely wipe it out because this thing puts a code in the memory and makes a .dll file that restores it each time the user boots or even as soon as it realizes that the trojan has been found and deleted. Thus this thing rises from the ashes like a sick Phoenix bird. Anyway, MBAM cleared it, found like 27 entries for it while Spybot only found 4. So my computer is now healthy again and I did some writing. So...celecrate!

Because I feel indulgent, some clarifications in case new characters have thrown readers for a loop: **Daken** is an old guy that worked for Sess in _Runaway._ **Oushi** is Daken's cousin and has always been introduced in relation to military as a general or a gaurd/executioner. **Yamome** was the wife of a ruler of the Middle Lands named Arasoizuki. Her husband was killed by Sess in _Runaway._ **Boroya** is her second born son, the only one that survived Sess's attack. **Kanseninu** is Lord of the Northern Lands, though the clan there is extensive, so he is not the only one.

Disclaimer: I do not own them.

Last Chapter: Jishin and Rin woke up in the spirit realm. I left you all with the cliffhanger when Inutaisho's spirit showed up! Hehe. Also IY brought a physician to wake Saya up, but when she was awake she didn't recognize Sess as being her father and that really upset Big Daddy. He tried to take Saya forcefully from IY, the way he would have when he had the strength to force that sort of thing, but IY knocked him over. (I just love playing with IY's faceted personality there, the guilt for having the power to harm his brother, the sympathy he can feel at seeing the illness) and Sess, distraught, sent everyone out of the room. Also Shiroihana brought Rin back to Shimo's castle and left her in Tsuki and Shippo's care.

* * *

**Moonlight**

Without thought to Jishin behind her, or her changed identity from human to inuyoukai, Rin dropped down to her knees. She had never met Inutaisho in life of course or in any other excursion into the land of the dead, but his name was legendary and half-mythical. Rin might have doubted his existence if she had not seen paintings and etchings in his likeness at Nejiro, which had been Inutaisho's primary fortification while living. Even if such images hadn't existed, Rin could have recognized him for his similarity to Sesshomaru and Inuyasha.

Her palms sank into the mud, pale except for where the backs of her hands were streaked with yellow markings. It was a sharp contrast to the thick, gray-black mud. Rain droplets speckled the ground around her and heavier drops fell from her hair and left little pock marked craters in the mud.

"Formality has no purpose to the dead," Inutaisho told her.

Rin lifted her head slightly and risked peeking at her mate's father. She expected to see booted feet but instead there was only a gold-tinged mist hovering over the mud. Water dripped onto her face, into her eyes. "Lord Inutaisho," she repeated her greeting. A strange heaviness had taken root inside her, wiping away everything else. Time slowed.

"Jishin," Inutaisho called. For the first time since his arrival Rin became aware of the goddess breathing behind her, moaning like a child after a long temper tantrum. "You would do best to face your fate and release Lady Rin. Enough lying. You are exiled."

Jishin crowed with pain, again making Rin think of a child. She resisted the urge to turn and stare at the goddess. "This hurts!" she wailed.

As if he could read Rin's silent questions, Inutaisho said, "It is only because you are not accustomed to mortal sensation. Give in and the pain will cease. You will begin the cycle over again. You will have the chance to be reborn."

Uncertainly, pressing her lips together, Rin raised her gaze until she could look into Inutaisho's face. It was obscured as if through a veil or a fog and suffused with a warm golden glow. Rin drew a deep breath in, struggling against the thick air of the spirit world. She asked her question bluntly, "Have I died here?"

Inutaisho's head moved though Rin could not determine any expression or whether he was truly looking at her or not. _We are on different realms,_ she realized. "No, you are not dead. You were sent here by a charmed blade that attacked the soul. Your body lives for now in the land of the living. My wife stabbed you with the charmed blade to send you and Jishin here. Here, while the blade is still in your physical body, you must kill Jishin."

Jishin let out a pathetic, keening cry.

Rin winced at the sound. Although she had longed to scratch out the goddess's red eyes during her long journey back to Shimofuri's castle and when Jishin had trapped her soul in the land of the dead while her body gestated the abomination in the Northern Lands. Yet now their footing was unequal in a different way and Rin could feel nothing but disgust and pity for the former goddess sobbing behind her.

"Is there no other way?" she asked.

"Your body and soul are linked currently with the goddess. It is only that tie that keeps her here. The blade has allowed you this chance to shirk her influence, to dissolve the tie between you both. Once she is dead here you will waken into your own body." Inutaisho moved forward, floating, gliding in the heavy gray air. One arm extended, reaching out to her. Rin steeled herself, refusing to flinch as his hand touched her cheek and then slid down to her chin. The touch sent a hot electric shudder down her spine—it was not a pleasant sensation. She gritted her teeth and tried to keep her face from showing the discomfort. The realm between Death where Inutaisho spoke to her from, and the spirit world, the between-state where Rin's soul lingered with Jishin ground against each other at his touch. It was like rock on rock, an earthquake of the supernatural channeled through her body.

"My son chose well. You will give him fine heirs. Your heart will temper his ambition and soften his indomitable nature." He withdrew his hand but Rin still felt the raw heat of it on her chin. "I must give you a warning."

Behind her, Rin heard Jishin gasping, trying to her feet and escape. Her body tensed, preparing to do as Inutaisho had said she must in order to awaken back in the real world. "Lord Inutaisho?"

"The gift you have been given, the extension of your life by way of your transformation."

Rin nodded her head to indicate that she understood. He was speaking of the fact that she was inuyoukai now.

"It will not be permanent. You are the amalgamation of several inuyoukai families fused into one new body, but your soul is marked always as human. As the years pass your inuyoukai body will begin to return to a human state to match your soul." He paused and his head ducked in a tiny movement as he asked, "Do you understand?"

The news disturbed Rin, but somehow failed to surprise her. Emotion had not risen yet and Rin stifled it. "I understand."

The worst news was still to come she discovered.

"Each child you bear will shorten the time before your body will return to its natural form." As Rin absorbed the fresh information she felt a jolt in her stomach of trepidation. She would have to choose between giving Sesshomaru children and sharing a lifespan closer to his own. It was a harsh, cruel choice.

"Lord Inutaisho," she murmured and bowed to hide the stricken look that had come over her face.

"Go now," Inutaisho said. "You must return to my son and protect your family—and mine—from harm."

As Rin lifted her head to say some kind of goodbye she let out a squeak of surprise. Inutaisho's form had vanished already. Only a few sparkles of gold were left, floating in the air, like glitter spilled by a clumsy child. For a few moments Rin could only watch the golden sparkles, recalling Inutaisho's warning, wondering what it would mean for her future. Then she heard the sucking and popping sound of Jishin walking behind her.

Rin rose to her feet. Mud oozed off her knees and her palms, splattering back where it had come from. She turned and watched as Jishin hobbled away at a slow speed, stumbling every few steps and landing in a sprawled position. The mud clung to her, as if the spirit world were grabbing at her, unwilling to allow her to wander any deeper into it. The goddess was crying, panting, holding her bleeding side.

Curiously, Rin touched her own injury in its spot mirroring Jishin's. The blood flowed, bright red and sluggish, congealing as it coagulated. The gray-black of the mud mixed with it when she smeared them together on her fingers, turning a nasty fecal brown. Color was a mark of the living world, whispering to Rin of how close she was to that other world and all who dwelled in it.

Jishin had reached the edge of the clearing where dark gray pine trees loomed up, dripping in the rain and shrouded by mist. Rin thought of Saya racing through the open field outside of Jouka, and then recalled the smell of the smoke and ash as the palace had burned, set afire by Jishin's earthquake. The memory kindled enough anger to propel Rin across the hills, to the edge of the meadow.

She snatched Jishin up by the arm that the goddess was using to clutch at her injury. She screamed and swatted at Rin with her other hand. As Rin lifted the goddess up, Jishin's screams turned into a higher, desperate agony. Rin had stretched out her side by lifting her, pulling at the wound. Fresh blood oozed out, slithering down her leg. Rin felt her own wound smart, stinging, and increased wetness slipped out of her as well, setting her soaked robes with a thicker, stickier moisture than rain.

Jishin's teeth ground in a hard grin of pain. Her lips were wide apart, her hands shaking. Dispatching Jishin from the pain she was unaccustomed to would be release, not punishment.

Rin made a wide slash with her other hand, using the index and middle claws to cut out Jishin's throat and in doing so silenced the goddess forever. She dropped Jishin to the ground and watched for a few moments as she fell over, gasping vainly. Blood appeared, but it was thin and there was very little of it. Rin had seen death before, and although it was not a pleasant thing to watch, Jishin's was swift and the blood minimal. The effects of the spirit world drained her of color, until the blood was nearly the same shade as the mud that Jishin's body sank into.

Distant thunder rumbled and the vibrations passed through the ground and into Rin's socked feet. With the vibration came a tingling throughout her body, then an intensifying dizziness. Rin lurched for the trees and leaned on one. The heavy air was harder and harder to breathe…she peeked through her lidded eyes and saw the pine needles at the base of the tree. They flickered, becoming a rust-brown and then darkening into the spirit-realm's ugly dark gray.

The scent of the trees filled her nose in a rush: a clean, sharp resin smell.

_I'm waking up,_ Rin thought. _I'm leaving this world behind and returning to the living._

Then the pine needles seemed to rise up, dark gray, and rush at her, filling her throat as she puffed on the air. Rin's throat closed and her heart twisted on itself with panic as the dizziness consumed her and plunged her into darkness as if the pine needles had swallowed her like the gaping mouth of a whale.

* * *

Rin snapped awake with a sudden coughing fit. She pawed at her mouth and her lips with both hands and rolled onto her side. The world was unclear, blurred as Inutaisho had been when he spoke to her from Death. It came into focus slowly once Rin heard Tsukiyume's voice, calling out to her, repeating her name.

"Lady Rin! Rin? Rin, are you okay?" The hanyou girl's hand was on her back, patting it.

The coughing filled Rin with hot, streaking pain. She gave a small cry and forced herself to lie on her back, breathing normally. The pain was in her side, the place where she had been bleeding from even in the spirit realm. She could feel the foreign presence of the blade inside the flesh of her side. It chafed and felt oddly hot. Rin explored the wound by touch, moving her fingers cautiously to her side and pushing aside the fabric in her way until she found the tear in her robes.

Seeing her movement, Tsukiyume grabbed her hand, stilling the fingers. "Lady Shiroihana brought you in with this wound…" she said. "You were possessed by the goddess Jishin, do you remember?"

"Yes," Rin croaked. She closed her eyes and let out a long breath as a natural sleep called to her and made her limbs heavy. "She's gone now."

* * *

Kanseninu, the inuyoukai lord from the north, did not face defeat in the bushido way of human warriors. When he saw Shimofuri's living, mortal human and youkai warriors start to advance on his own unnatural and undead army, doubt began to fester inside him like the first mold spores on wet wood. At first he could not connect how Shimofuri had managed to overcome Jishin's tricks, or how he had magically produced a fresh, fierce army of mainly youkai warriors.

The answer came when his sharp eyes spotted the second banner that Shimofuri's forces displayed. He spied inuyoukai generals and recognized the symbol of the Western Lands. After that recognition came the knowledge that the generals would be Daken and Oushi, Sesshomaru's wartime leaders.

How was it possible that Sesshomaru's armies had come out to defend the Nanka and the Middle Lands? Kanseninu had kept tab on the alliances of the area and knew that Sesshomaru and Shimofuri were not close. And aside from that, wasn't Sesshomaru dead or dying? Wasn't that what Jishin was doing?

Eager to advance on the castle, Kanseninu had split his living warriors into two parts. He kept one contingent with himself, hidden in the folds and hills and trees around where Shimofuri's army attacked the endless scourge of undead and ghostly shades. The other half of his living army he sent forward toward the castle. That had been early in the battle when he had been assured of victory at the swift death much of Shimofuri's army in only a matter of minutes. That confidence proved deadly.

Not long after Kanseninu recognized Oushi and Daken and the banner of the Western Lands, bloodied, beaten warriors came to him as messengers. They were from the half of his army that he had sent ahead toward Shimofuri's castle and they reported disaster. Before they had reached the heart of the Nanka the army of the Western Lands had cut them down. Sesshomaru's army vastly outnumbered Kanseninu's living forces. In a fair fight, where the ghosts and the undead were not used as backup soldiers, Kanseninu would stand no chance.

Victory had seemed so likely, now defeat and death breathed down his neck as one.

As his beaten warriors waited for his signal, and the contingent that had stayed with him began to realize that Shimofuri's were going to break through the lines of undead and ghosts, Kanseninu dug through his brain for one answer: _What went wrong?_ Had it been Jishin? He hadn't heard from her since before they had launched the attack. Who had orchestrated the combined attack by the Middle and Western Lands, if not Sesshomaru, who had that power? Surely Shimofuri hadn't done it, and Daken and Oushi were merely puppets. How was Shimofuri's army defeating the ghosts and the undead so effectively when before they had died like leaves during the first hard frost of late autumn.

He ordered his troops to retreat, still troubled by the thought that the answer was obvious and would reveal something to him, if only he could find it.

By sunset Shimofuri's forces had prevailed and pushed through all of the undead and the ghosts, laying them back to rest in pieces. Kanseninu's army had left a clear trail and after a short deliberation between Shimofuri, Oushi, and Daken, they decided to push onward until they had killed Kanseninu. Only when he was dead would his army dissemble and scatter.

They discussed their decision at the top of a forested hill, the same outpost that Kanseninu had used to watch the field where his unnatural soldiers laid waste to the Middle Lands. The other inuyoukai's scent was still present for Daken, Oushi, and Shimofuri to pick out. The sun had set, leaving the world blanketed in a dull gray-blue. Stars emerged on the velvet black of the sky, twinkling. The night had a hint of the approaching fall, and after that of deep frosts and winter.

"Send the human regiment home," Oushi said. "Their morale is low, I can tell by just looking at them. Let our youkai warriors do the rest."

"It is their right to defend the Middle Lands," Shimofuri put in. "But you're right, too many of them have died." His shoulders sank with sorrow at the reminder. He had barely won.

"It seems to me without the humans, young lord, the Middle Lands will have no army to follow Kanseninu at all! Perhaps you should return to the Nanka, to your castle. Allow us to end Kanseninu's life for you." This was Daken, cocking his head comically and grinning in a way that made Shimofuri bristle. Was the old general mocking him?

"I will stay," Shimofuri announced. "These are my lands, I—"

"Ah." A deep feminine voice made all three inuyoukai men turn with surprise and reach for their swords at their waists with momentary alarm. They relaxed when they recognized Shiroihana's form emerge from the shadows. She was smiling slyly and stroking the white fluff at her shoulders.

Daken and Oushin bowed deeply to her, but Shimofuri's response was begrudging and wary. Shiroihana's eyes moved over her generals casually, then landed on Shimofuri and stayed there, heavy as buckets of water. "I see you have all fared well."

"Hardly," Shimofuri replied, unable to mask his emotion. "Most of my warriors died. The humans did not retreat, I admire their courage."

"But they are free to go now," Shiroihana said, dismissively. To Daken she said, "You should maintain our forces here for the time being just in case I fail."

Both generals and Shimofuri alike reacted with noticeable confusion. Daken asked, "My lady?"

Shiroihana shrugged her shoulders, puffing the fur. She closed her eyes like a smug cat enjoying afternoon sunlight. "I will dispatch Kanseninu."

"Alone?" Daken barked, raising his voice in a way that made Shimofuri and Oushi start with surprise. The old general seemed to catch himself and grunted awkwardly. "Surely my lady will not risk herself so brashly?"

Shiroihana turned her back on the three. One hand rested on Meidou-seki, the other rested peacefully at her side. She stared after the disturbed ground, the dirt that had been uprooted and the grass that had been spread out by uncaring feet as Kanseninu's army abandoned the fight. She sniffed loudly, picking out his scent and her mouth curled in a dark but gleeful smile. "By morning I will return to you, Oushi, Daken, with Kanseninu's head. Wait for me until then, then if I have not returned you may follow. And Lord Shimofuri." She turned round to face her generals and the young lord. "You should return to your castle. It is time that you arrange for your betrothal ceremony with Lady Ginrei."

Shimofuri could not stop himself from scowling. "I will not leave. This is—"

"But you must return to your wife-to-be!" Shiroihana exclaimed with a mocking gasp. "The longer the lady is left to stew about her future, the harder it will be for you to pacify her!"

Daken began to snicker quietly, a nervous titter. Oushi dug into the older man's ribs with one armored elbow to silence him. Daken had an unfortunate habit of laughing during tense moments. His constant smirking made him hard to read, which was probably why he was tolerated as a messenger and as a general in spite of the snickering, which had struck many that didn't know him well as disrespectful over the centuries.

Shimofuri was one of those that heard the laughter and immediately took offense. He glared at Daken and growled, "I've had enough of th—"

"You mustn't worry about Daken," Shiroihana interrupted. Her voice was light, almost fluffy, as if the situation thoroughly amused her as well. "This is his bad habit. It means nothing. But come now, Lord Shimofuri, I know you are fond of Lady Ginrei. Surely you long to return to her? You must know she is very angry with the whole lot of us for deceiving her."

Shimofuri's irritation changed instantly to rage. He took a step forward, getting into Shiroihana's personal space. He was taller than she was, but her scent was powerful, hinting at her enormous inner strength. Her aura interacted with hers negatively, making Shimofuri's skin itch as he tried to intimidate her. "_You_ were the one that hurt her, not me!"

"You had your part," Shiroihana said. Her voice had darkened, becoming serious. "Rather than challenging me you should be returning to claim her before she runs away and takes my granddaughter with her. You are running short of chances to take a wife, Shimofuri." She had dropped her flattery now, choosing to address him as if she were his superior. And as Shimofuri drew away from her, partly overwhelmed by her prickling aura, he couldn't help but think that Shiroihana _was_ his superior, in spite of being female. She was older than he was, more powerful, and more experienced. She was also the mother of the current Lord of the Western Lands and the former wife of the great Inutaisho.

"It is Lady Ginrei," Shiroihana went on, "or Lady Yamome from the Northern Lands. I know you would prefer Ginrei. It is written all over you."

"Yamome is part of this uprising," Shimofuri muttered. "She should meet the same fate as Kanseninu."

Shiroihana clucked her tongue. "Don't you worry about that, Lord Shimofuri. We will make use of her yet. Now, take this to the hanyou girl." The hand that had been lying over Meidou-seki shifted, dropping to her waist and slipping into the folds of the obi. Her hand was closed in a fist as she lifted it and extended it out to Shimofuri.

Startled, Shimofuri barely managed to catch the small, round, white stone she dropped into his palm. Shimofuri frowned lightly as he felt the warmth of the stone, not from Shiroihana's body, but from some charm or spell enveloped deep within it. "What is this?"

"Some bit of fox magic. Give it to my granddaughter—the hanyou girl. Not Hanone."

Slowly, almost warily, Shimofuri slipped the stone into a pocket at his waist, near where his sword was sheathed. "Why have you not done it yourself?"

Shiroihana turned her head away from him and the two generals, all who were watching her. Her face creased with some odd emotion and then she sniffed dismissively. "I haven't the time. I am going to kill Kanseninu." Without looking at them, she addressed her generals. "You will wait for me?"

Both of them ducked low, bowing before her. Daken spoke for them both. "Of course, my lady."

"Good." Shiroihana walked with a slow, stately grace, following the tracks that led away from her generals and Shimofuri, toward where Kanseninu was fleeing into the north. She called over her shoulder. "You should get moving, Lord Shimofuri!"

Growling to himself, Shimofuri turned away from the generals and moved in the opposite direction. He would set his warriors free, leaving the forces of the Western Lands alone to defend his province.

* * *

In Tsukiyume's absence Inuyasha, Miroku, and Saya were ushered through the halls, all of them identical to the point that even Inuyasha lost his sense of direction. Miroku's staff jangled with each step as they turned left, then right, treaded down a long passageway, and then entered another stairwell. Shippo had gone with Tsukiyume but Inuyasha kept twisting his head around, searching for some sign that the kit was following them.

It wasn't long before Inuyasha lost his patience. Saya was on his hip, halfway tucked inside his haori. Her head rested on his shoulder, her breath puffed at his neck as she tried to doze off. "Hey," Inuyasha grumbled, calling to the bald man that was leading them. "Where the hell are we going?"

The man called over his shoulder. "I am taking you to Jaken…"

"That little idiot is here?" Inuyasha asked, scowling.

Saya twitched on his shoulder and murmured, "Jaken-sama…?"

"Yeah, the toad. You know Jaken only comes with your dad. He would never follow a shape-shifter. Jaken would know the difference. Are you sure you don't want to go see your dad again?"

Saya whimpered, a tiny, weak sound.

Alarmed, Inuyasha halted and shifted Saya, trying to waken her completely. "Saya?" He shook her shoulder gently. The little girl's head lolled limply and her eyes rolled. "Saya!"

The manservant and Miroku stopped when they heard Inuyasha's panic. Miroku rushed to join the suddenly distraught hanyou. "What's happened to her?"

"I don't know," Inuyasha snarled. His ears laid flat in distress. He knelt on the floor and set Saya down in front of him. She slumped forward, unable to sit upright, reminding Inuyasha and Miroku of a baby or a toddler. Inuyasha held Saya's chin in his hand and tapped her cheek with the other. "Wake up! Saya! Hey kid! Snap out of it!"

Saya's eyes stayed open, but it was clear from her slouching position that she was barely able to stay awake. Behind her lidded eyes Inuyasha saw gold-brown irises. The amber color was leeching out of them, as if they were pouring ink into her to darken them into a true brown. The purple moon in her forehead was pallid, fading into a color like a bruise. Her lips moved, mumbling her uncle's name.

"Shit," Inuyasha cursed. "Shit, shit, shit."

"We must fetch the physician," the bald man said. "But first, let me take you to our destination."

"Is it much further?" Miroku asked.

The man shook his head. "No, it is just down the hall now. These are the guest quarters."

Inuyasha pulled Saya into his arms and tucked her protectively to his chest. "Don't fall asleep, Saya, do you hear me?" he was yelling directly in her ear but Saya barely flinched to acknowledge the loud sound.

They hurried down the hall to a large room where the bald man knelt and slid open the door. "Jaken, sir," the bald man said, speaking into the room, "more guests have arrived."

The toad squawked from within, "What?"

Inuyasha and Miroku entered the room swiftly, without making any greeting to Jaken. They had expected the room to house only the toad, but from the moment they entered Inuyasha picked out a new, different scent and Miroku paused at one side of the door, taken by surprise.

The room was large because it was, in a way, a luxurious cage. The walls of the room were brightly decorated and stronger than many of the others in the residence. The wood was thicker; the screens triple layered in gold leafs. On the opposite side of the room from the door was a large slightly raised platform where a futon had been spread out. Thick fur blankets were set in a messy bundle over it. Even to Miroku, essentially blind without a sharp sense of smell, the furs gave away the secret hidden beneath them with their movement and a little choking sound.

"Saya!" Jaken squealed, shocked to see her in the arms of Sesshomaru's bastard brother. Shock gave way to a frantic worry as he saw the way her body slumped and her hands flopped lightly at her side. "What have you done to her!"

There was a writing table near the futon and, closest to the door, a table for dining that was surrounded by cushions. Inuyasha procured the cushions, lining them up by kicking them with his bare feet. Miroku moved to help him after the moment of surprise at the room and its contents had passed. Jaken scrambled to join them, though his intention was to take Saya from them. "What have you done to her?" he shrieked again.

Inuyasha batted the imp away as if he were a yapping Pekinese. He laid Saya down on the cushions and tapped her cheek. "Saya? Wake up…"

Her fingers twitched and she moaned. "Uncle…"

"Get the physician!" Miroku yelled at the bald man who was still knelt in the doorway, being useless. The man bowed and disappeared, not bothering to shut the door.

A shout came from the back of the room where the futon was. The furs had shifted and now when Inuyasha, Miroku, and Jaken turned to look at the sound, they saw what the covers had hidden: an inuyoukai boy. His hair was white and fell to his chin, apparently clipped in a style from the north. His eyes were a bright green like unripe olives or the tips of peacock feathers. His cheeks had single yellow marks, jagged as Inutaisho's had been.

"Who the hell is that?" Inuyasha snapped.

"My charge," Jaken grumbled. "A hostage from the Northern clan."

The boy leapt from the bed and ran for the open door. He was dressed in a thin night robe, colored a dark forest green but embroidered with lily pads and frogs. His legs and his feet were bare and splattered with dirt and mud and something with a red tint that could have been just more dust, but struck Inuyasha as being blood. Jaken let out a squawk and ran to stop the boy.

"What the hell is with these people and hostages," Inuyasha growled, suddenly angry. Years ago Shimofuri's mother had held Kagome hostage in a similar room with a huge futon and fur covers.

"Yes," Miroku murmured, agreeing. "I wonder what this is really all about."

The boy stopped when Jaken blocked his path. Though the boy was taller than Jaken and undoubtedly could knock the toad aside, he seemed cowed by the imp in some way. He was shivering and making small noises like a puppy. He was older than Saya. If he had been human Inuyasha would have guessed the boy's age at seven. Of course because he was a full-blooded inuyoukai he could actually be 70 for all Inuyasha knew.

"You must stay here, boy!" Jaken was shouting, pounding the floor with his flat, toady feet. "If you flee your mother will be killed and you will lose your inheritance!"

The boy let out a little choking sound. "I want Mother…"

"Well she's not here! You are old enough to act honorably so do it!" When this taunt failed to make the boy turn and walk back to the futon, abandoning the idea of escape, Jaken added, "I'll bring the fox to curse you if you don't behave. He'll turn you into a worm and cut you in half!"

This had the desired effect. The boy turned and hurried back to the futon and the protection of the covers. As he crawled back into them, pulling the furs over his head, he peeked out and noted the others that had joined Jaken for the first time. With a child's open, unashamed curiosity, he raised his voice, suddenly brave. "Who are you?"

"Don't answer!" Jaken ordered. "And boy, you do not address them!"

"Saya!" Inuyasha shouted into his niece's face with no result. The little girl had drifted off. Panicked, Inuyasha leaned down and listened to her chest. Her heartbeat continued steadily and her small chest rose and fell in a slow but constant pace. He pulled away with a deep frown marring his otherwise handsome face. "Dammit."

"What have you done to her?" Jaken demanded for the third time. Even Inuyasha, distracted as he was, heard the genuine worry in the imp's voice.

"Nothing," Inuyasha growled. "Stop badgering us."

Miroku was much more civil. "We were attacked by the supernatural being that has instigated all of this. She nearly killed Saya, but at the last moment there was a great white light and Saya was released. Since then Saya has been unconscious, except for when the physician woke her in Lord Sesshomaru's presence."

Jaken's mouth fell open in a little triangular shape. His snake-like tongue wriggled inside like a worm. "You saw Lord Sesshomaru!"

"Would you stop that racket?" Inuyasha snarled, lashing out with one clawed hand, ripping at the air directly in front of Jaken's face. The imp yelped and hopped backward into a safe distance just out of the angered hanyou's reach.

"Is she breathing regularly?" Miroku queried from over Inuyasha's shoulder.

"Yeah, she just won't wake up."

From the futon the boy called out, "Who are you? Monk? And—" he stammered as he came to Inuyasha and his face flickered with a perturbed mixture of bafflement and amusement. He sniffed at Inuyasha audibly, trying to pick out his scent to learn what sight could not tell him. Of course that didn't help either as the scent was a unique mixture of inuyoukai and human.

"How many times do I have to tell you?" Jaken shrieked. "Do not address them! Make your mother and your clan proud and be silent!"

"What am I supposed to do?" the boy whined. "I don't want to be a hostage!"

While Inuyasha was distracted with poking at Saya, trying to rouse her and watch over her vital signs, as if Death couldn't touch her while his hawkish hanyou eyes were searching, Miroku had a moment when he could view the strange inuyoukai boy with pity. He had heard tales from history and from popular ballads or songs about hostages. It was a common practice in the courts of warlords and, apparently, in inuyoukai clans. It forced loyalty from the parents of the hostages, but the idea of the trauma placed on such a young child pained Miroku.

"Go to sleep!" Jaken squawked. "The sun has set."

The boy seemed to shrink pathetically. "There aren't any windows here. I can't see—"

"He's right," a deep, powerful male voice spoke from the door. "The sun has set." All eyes, except for Saya who was unconscious, turned to the open doorway. Shimofuri stood there, his boots and armor scuffed with dirt and blood and his long, silken blue-black hair a little less smooth than usual. Even his face had a few streaks of dirt marring the otherwise flawless skin.

"Lord Shimofuri," Jaken muttered with a tiny obeisance, the most minimal show of respect he could make without being rude. "Have you met with success?"

"I would be dead if I had not," Shimofuri returned curtly. He was frowning, clearly in a bad mood. His blue-gray eyes flew to Inuyasha and Miroku. The hanyou, his cousin, was sitting with his back to the door, focused on something on the floor. By scent Shimofuri had already picked out what that something was. "Sesshomaru's daughter is here? Lady Rin's daughter?"

Jaken grumbled under his breath and glared at Shimofuri's feet, irritated by the young upstart's lack of a proper title when mentioning Sesshomaru. It was Miroku, who had also bowed to the Lord of the Middle Lands from the waist up, who answered Shimofuri. "Yes, Saya is with us. She is…unconscious."

Shimofuri's frown deepened, becoming less annoyed, more troubled. He reached past the armor at his middle and into his robes. He held his hand out and opened it up, revealing the white stone on his palm. "Sesshomaru's mother asked that I give this to her."

"That?" Jaken demanded, blinking his egg-yolk yellow-orange eyes with surprise.

Miroku strode forward and accepted the stone cautiously, turning it over in his own hand. Inuyasha's ears had turned back to listen to the exchange and, reluctantly, he had at last looked away from his niece to watch the exchange. As soon as Miroku was close enough to touch, Inuyasha grabbed the monk's hand and snatched the white stone from him.

"Inuyasha!"

The hanyou ignored the monk's protestations and sniffed at the stone, then felt it carefully, concentrating. "This has a demonic aura," he paused and then added, "a _kitsune_ aura."

"Of course it does!" Jaken huffed. "That fox messenger—Aojiroi—he gave it to Saya weeks ago! It's useless!" He glanced at Shimofuri and said, "That foolish Shiroihana—how did she come to possess it? She isn't content unless she is causing someone trouble!"

The frown that had been carved into Shimofuri's face lightened at the little imp's words until finally a small smirk tugged at the corners of his lips. With one issue dealt with he turned his attention to the futon, to the strange little boy in his royal guestroom. "Jaken—is this Boroya?"

Jaken let out a long puff of air. "Yes—that fox put me in charge of him."

"I see," Shimofuri murmured. He shifted uncomfortably, aware that the boy was staring at him with wide, nearly terrified eyes. "I will return to meet with him on more official terms soon. Until then see that he is comfortable and keep him occupied."

"Yes, lord." As Jaken bowed Shimofuri was already walking away, leaving the door standing wide and open, exposing the darkened, gloomy hall beyond. As the young lord's footsteps receded, fading down the passageway, Jaken sat upright and shuddered. If he had been covered in feathers each quill would have pricked up and outward, making him look like a fuzzy cactus. As it was the imp appeared as if he were shivering with anger. "Am I _always_ going to be a _babysitter?"_

As soon as Shimofuri had left, Miroku knelt down to be close to Inuyasha and the unmoving, prostrate Saya laying on the cushions that her uncle had arranged for her. "Inuyasha," Miroku murmured quietly, trying to keep the words from the boy and Jaken alike. "I think it was the white fox stone that saved Saya from Jishin. Do you suppose it is responsible for putting her in this state?"

Inuyasha nodded somberly. He was holding the stone, opening and closing his fist around it, feeling the gentle prickle of its inner power. "Giving it back to her could make her better," he conceded with a frown, "but it could make it worse too."

"It was a gift," Miroku reminded him. "I doubt it was given with negative intentions."

Growling, Inuyasha pushed the stone into his haori and dropped it into the small pocket sewn into his inner haori shirt. "I ain't taking any chances giving it back to her until we talk to that fox."

* * *

Sesshomaru slept in the room alone. The room seemed haunted in spite of the open window that let the milky, opaque light of the moon stream in. Sesshomaru had opened all the wood slats after the sun had set and he'd eaten a final evening meal. Ginrei lingered outside his door, waiting for the moment when he would call on her to rejoin him. Sesshomaru resisted it, knowing that during his time of weakness every moment with her forged a bond that he didn't want with her.

Beneath the blankets that night, as the need for sleep had claimed him in its mortal, human cycle, enslaved to the turning of the earth, to sun and moon, Sesshomaru dreamed. Inuyoukai dreams were distant, mostly laughable, and with the rareness of sleep they were more fantasy than anything else. Now Sesshomaru saw evil things pass over his closed lids and could not turn away or deny them.

The milky moonlight became a slithering ghost, a gooey liquid that crawled over his body, weighing him down until it reached his mouth and rolled inside. It smothered him and Sesshomaru woke gasping for breath. Ginrei called from outside, hearing with her acute inuyoukai ears his respiratory distress. Sesshomaru found a weak, pathetic voice and tried to harden it. "Stay where you are, Ginrei," he ordered.

She obeyed and he was grateful.

He fell asleep this time to the sound of Hanone's feet pattering on the floor. It triggered a memory, filled with warmth and love. He himself was a pup, trotting over a wide veranda covered in mist. It was his mother's palace. He found a gray tree frog on the stairs and caught it. Yet rather than eat it, Sesshomaru rushed to where his mother was seated overlooking the stairs, shrouded in white mist. Sesshomaru presented the frog to her and babbled that it was his friend. He gave it a meaningless name and let his mother hold it. It was a real memory, buried deep in his subconscious, but his human dream drew it up and out of him, like a rock from the seabed and altered it into something monstrous.

In his dream his mother took the fragile, gray tree frog and smiled only for a moment before her face clenched in hatred. Her fist closed over the frog and Sesshomaru heard its body squelch, its tiny bones snap like bark under a cat's claws. Sesshomaru's eyes burned with a sudden rush of tears. Shiroihana tossed the bloodied, pulpy mass onto his chest and her clawed fingers then flew out and reached inside his mouth to pinch at his gums.

The child's shriek in his dream was a quiet, deep moan where he lied in bed. The pain in his gums was in dream and in reality. As Sesshomaru's mind wakened from that dream and noted the passage of time in the way the slant of the moonlight from the window had changed, the realization came that the phantom pain had not faded. Cautiously, Sesshomaru placed a finger into his mouth and touched the empty, raw gums where his canines had been until Jishin's curse had knocked them out. Instead of raw flesh, Sesshomaru's blunt fingertips met with the first hardness of healing and a notch where new enamel had sprung up.

His teeth were returning.

The pain and the excitement of the realization kept him awake for some time. He laid still, his mind blank, watching the light of the moon flow down from the sky. He slipped into the dream world without being aware of it. One moment there was the fading moonlight, the next he was not alone in the room. The darkening room changed shape and traveled through time until he was kneeling beside Rin's bed, staring down at her pallid, tear and sweat-soaked face as she strained in labor.

As before, with his childhood memory, the dream altered this as well. In reality Rin had given birth to Saya and both had recovered from the traumatic event. But now he saw her mouth yawn open wide, her spine curling in agony. He saw the light fade from her eyes and her lips darken, turning a sickly dark blue. He was unable to move or to speak, a mere observer as his greatest love faded into an oblivion that he could not rescue her from.

And then the child emerged from her dead body, splitting her open wide like an overripe melon. As with the frog, Sesshomaru saw the gore, the pulpy masses of flesh and organs, the trembling of muscles that had not yet lost their vibrant crimson color. The child was Saya and yet she was not. She fled from him when he approached her, screaming in a language so ancient that Sesshomaru understood it not with his ears but with his bones, sinew, and soul. The crescent moon in her forehead glowed and then darkened into the same color that the dead-Rin's lips were. She ran from the room by leaping into the window. The moonlight illuminated her small, wet body. Her hair was vibrant, glowing surreally.

She turned and looked back at him over her shoulder before leaping from the window. Her lips moved and although no sound emerged, Sesshomaru knew, in the way of all dreamers, exactly what she had said: _"You are not my father."_

He leaped after her, trying to call her name, trying to stop her, but his mouth was filled with cotton, choking and smothering him. It was white as the moonlight. Smothering him. His chest heaved.

Suddenly the moonlight was gone, replaced by the faint, bluish tint of the earliest sunrise. Sesshomaru blinked and saw that the room had come into a sharp clarity that set his head throbbing lightly. A few inhalations and he knew that his sense of smell had mostly returned. The linens had a stink of human sweat, a specific scent he had not been able to distinguish for days.

He rose, sitting upright, and pawed at his face, feeling the sweat and grime from his troubled sleep and dreaming. The pain in his mouth had diminished already and when Sesshomaru ran a exploratory fingertip over his teeth he found both canines had returned as well as the carnassials, the shearing molar teeth in the back of his mouth.

The mirror that he had used to dress himself the previous day had been left in the corner farthest from his bedding, across from the door. Sesshomaru walked to it and noted how smoothly his feet and legs worked, how easily he maintained his balance, and how little pain he felt throughout it all. Cautiously, the Lord of the Western Lands turned the silvered surface of the mirror toward his face and unconsciously held his breath as he recognized the being that stared back.

Timid, pale streaks of pink-red traced over each cheek and in the center of his forehead a discoloration had started in the shape of the crescent moon. And over his scalp white hair had emerged, smooth and already reaching his ears. Sharp, golden irises glinted back at him.

With the arrival of the sunlight Sesshomaru's youkai features and much of his strength and powers, had returned at last.

* * *

A/N: A preview of next chapter!

_To his credit, Kanseninu suddenly turned away and sighed, visibly shamed. "Dress," he ordered. "I am sorry for my behavior. I did not believe that the mother of one as despicable as Sesshomaru could act with honor."_

"_Leave," Shiroihana spat at the wolf. He retreated quickly; also ashamed for the part he had played. Shiroihana knelt and picked up her outer robe and the obi. She dressed meekly and in silence. At last, as she knotted the obi awkwardly behind her, she said, "If I were a man I would gladly slaughter you in war, Kanseninu, but as a woman I am weakened. I do not like cruelty. You deserve to die for killing my son before he could sire a proper heir. You have left the Western Lands without a male ruler."_


	36. Mother's Vengeance

A/N: I guess the preview scared some but fear not! This is my birthday and it couldn't pass without an update of some kind! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own them.

* * *

**Mother's Vengeance**

At the same time that her son awoke from his last nightmare to the blue-tint of the first hint of dawn, Shiroihana caught up to the trudging, weary, and demoralized troops that had been Kanseninu's army. They were already at the border of the Middle Lands to the north, resting before they would tackle the mountain passes the next day. They lit no fires to avoid easy detection, but Shiroihana had followed their tracks as well as their scent, rank and male.

She didn't try to hide herself as she approached a sentry. He was a wolf youkai with a bushy light gray tail. With her keen nose, Shiroihana knew long before the wolf saw her and spoke that the gray was from old age, not his real color. His armor clanked metallically. Shiroihana could smell the rust in it and the mold in his tattered robes. He was an old, lowborn wolf, banished or exiled from his pack, a terrible existence. She felt a cold pity stirring in her chest.

"Wolf," she called to him from the deep, lightless shadows of the forest. Without fires from the army and with the trees shielding her from the moon and starlight, Shiroihana knew her eyes would reflect very little light. The wind carried her scent away from her, not toward the wolf. She had the element of surprise until she made herself known.

He whipped around in her direction and narrowed a thick, hairy brow and skin covered in thick wrinkles like cracks in splintered wood. "Who's that?"

She could guess what was happening in his mind. He wondered if he had heard a ghost or a kitsune trying to trick him because the voice was female. Shiroihana restrained her smile as she stepped forward, letting him hear noisy footfalls.

He spun, searching out the sound with movements of his head. He lifted a spear with a sharp tip that glinted in the opaque white moonlight. He let it fly the second he saw the slightest reflection from Shiroihana's white hair and golden eyes. Shiroihana saw the shaft racing at her, straight and aimed for her head. She ducked and stepped to one side. Her pale hand shot out and caught the spear in mid air as easily as she might've plucked a flower from the ground.

The wolf shouted an alarm. "Shimofuri's forces have caught up with us!"

Shiroihana rushed at him from the dark of the trees, bursting through the foliage and out into the open. Other guards shouted alarms and ran at her, but as they registered her as female, unarmored, and seemingly unprepared for a fight at all, they slowed and hesitated. Their nostrils flared, their eyes were wide as they took everything in from her that they could.

"She's some kind of trickster!"

"A witch of the Middle Lands!"

"She caught my spear," the wolf snarled. "Don't underestimate this dog bitch."

Shiroihana allowed herself to smile wryly. "I have not come to fight with you. I am here to negotiate with Lord Kanseninu of the Northern Lands."

A cat with a black coat and startling green eyes like jade charged forward with his claws out, snarling viciously. "Who are you, bitch?"

Shiroihana didn't bother concealing her irritation with his rudeness. She lifted one hand and flexed her claws. "I am to be addressed as Lady Shiroihana." She saw that the name meant nothing to them. She had nothing less from the ogres, wolves, foxes, bears, weasels, and cats, but even the young dog with gray-black hair had a blank look plastered over his face and his stance. Shiroihana decided to use their ignorance to her advantage.

"I am Lord Sesshomaru's mother," she revealed, and this drew the appropriate shock as mouths gaped wide and a few of them gasped. Real warriors would disguise their amazement, she thought disgustedly. "I have control of his armies. I have come to negotiate with Lord Kanseninu. Please take me to him."

The wolf held out his wrinkled, callused hand. "Give me the spear and I will take you to our lord."

Shiroihana made a show of her reluctance, as if being amongst Kanseninu's barbaric warriors from the North frightened her and the spear, chipped by the wolf's claws and poorly made, comforted her. When she had turned it over to him the wolf nodded and led her through the sea of warriors, all staring at her with undisguised curiosity. Shiroihana stroked the white pelt at her shoulders and internalized a sigh of disgust. _Let this be over swiftly or I will kill the whole lot of them._

The wolf led her through the scattered army, between little hillocks and copses of trees until on one foothill where the trees were especially dense, he halted and called into the shadows. "Lord Kanseninu! I bring a messenger from the Western Lands…"

From within the shadows Kanseninu exploded outward in a rushing rage. He was tall and narrow-bodied with white hair that he kept tied back and shorter than was normal in the Middle and Western Lands. He snatched Shiroihana by the throat and closed his fingers so tightly that her windpipe closed and his claws dug into the skin at the back of her neck. The wolf yipped with alarm and backed away with an awkward hop.

"You," Kanseninu growled, bending Shiroihana backward and glowering into her face. "It was you. You led Sesshomaru's armies."

Although she couldn't breathe, Shiroihana controlled her body and her mind with a will of steel. She did not panic as Kanseninu's claws bit into her skin. Her face flushed hot with lack of oxygen but she did not move against him.

"Lady Shiroihana," Kanseninu spat. "Mother of the Western Lands." His hold loosened slightly as he gave into curiosity, as Shiroihana had known he would. "Tell me why I shouldn't cut you down?"

Shiroihana drew in a small, calculated breath. Her throat ached but she could breathe. If she had fought and panicked in Kanseninu's hold then the inuyoukai would have reacted with bloodlust. He would have killed her or tried to take her against her will as a show of power. Of course Shiroihana would have stood a good chance of killing him in such a struggle, but that would have alerted the army by way of the wolf who was standing nearby, watching and listening with awe. Shiroihana didn't like messy situations. She preferred manipulation, the ultimate source of the great and sustainable power.

She spoke in a small voice, "My son is dead."

Kanseninu's mouth opened and then closed with surprise. His hold on her neck stayed loose. "That isn't a good reason for me to keep _you_ alive, is it?"

"I am the Lady of the Western Lands now," Shiroihana murmured. "I have come to negotiate peace with you."

"You and Shimofuri defeated me in battle—why do you desire peace now?" he demanded, unconvinced.

Shiroihana slowly lifted her hands and touched his wrist where it was secured like a parasite at her neck. "Please, I do not desire to be your enemy."

Kaseninu released her with a growl and then grunted at the wolf, "Search her."

The wolf licked his lips in an openly sexual manner, admiring Shiroihana as he stepped up behind her and started tugging on her robes. First his claws closed over the white pelt at her shoulders and Shiroihana hissed with genuine distress. "No, leave this."

The wolf paused and looked to Kanseninu. The Lord of the North nodded. "Let her keep her dignity, wolf."

With noticeably less enjoyment, the wolf untied Shiroihana's obi and had her strip out of her outer robe, then he felt along her body for hidden weapons through the lighter fabric of the inner robe. He was about to pronounce her clean when the meidou-seki at her neck drew his attention. "Take the necklace off," he growled.

"It was a gift from my late husband," Shiroihana protested, laying her pale hands over it.

Kanseninu growled, "Do it."

With another show of reluctance, Shiroihana lifted the heavy metallic necklace over her head and laid it onto the ground atop where the wolf had carelessly tossed her obi and outer robe. She stood before Kanseninu stripped to her inner robe, a white silk with embroidered purple flowers, and the rich white pelt at her shoulders. "Are you finished dishonoring a mourning mother?" she snapped.

To his credit, Kanseninu suddenly turned away and sighed, visibly shamed. "Dress," he ordered. "I am sorry for my behavior. I did not believe that the mother of one as despicable as Sesshomaru could act with honor."

"Leave," Shiroihana spat at the wolf. He retreated quickly; also ashamed for the part he had played. Shiroihana knelt and picked up her outer robe and the obi. She dressed meekly and in silence. At last, as she knotted the obi awkwardly behind her, she said, "If I were a man I would gladly slaughter you in war, Kanseninu, but as a woman I am weakened. I do not like cruelty. You deserve to die for killing my son before he could sire a proper heir. You have left the Western Lands without a male ruler."

Kanseninu's back was turned to her but he had cocked his head listening. When he spoke Shiroihana noted the pride, the mirth that he so clearly felt at the thought of having taken part in killing Sesshomaru. "I was not directly involved in your son's death. May I ask, how did he die?"

"You are too cruel," Shiroihana cried, letting out a little sob. It was not hard to fake. She thought of her son lying suffering in the little room in Shimofuri's castle, his great humiliation, his weakness…and then his dismissal of her when he learned that she had deceived him. It twisted her heart more than enough to set real tears into her eyes and catch her breath as she spoke. "An assassin, an illness—I know you were responsible. I have come to you to stop this needless killing. I ask you to disband your army, to swear your allegiance to peace."

Kanseninu snorted and laughed derisively. "I may disband my army, but I will never swear allegiance to anything or anyone but my clan and my family."

"Please—I am nothing but a weak-willed woman. I cannot contend long with war."

Kanseninu turned and examined her from head to toe. His narrowed eyes, the slight curl of his upper lip, and the hard set of his jaw all told Shiroihana she had made some sort of error. Finally he said, "And yet you wield Sesshomaru's armies very well. It seems the Western Lands can be ruled well enough by a woman."

"They do not know of my son's death," Shiroihana sobbed. "Please—do not make me beg. Disband your army. Allow me to sort out the Western Lands in peace."

His stance relaxed, revealing Shiroihana's success. "What's in it for me?"

Shiroihana's mind raced. "I will swear allegiance to you and send a ration of food each harvest."

"Very well." He strode forward and held out his hand to her. "Join me as I order the men on their way. I will stay with you to discuss the arrangements of our pact." The glint of his teeth, the sharpness of his words, the swagger of his walk all filled Shiroihana with loathing. She accepted his hand with feigned meekness, counting down the seconds until she could lop off his head and carry it back to Daken and Oushi. Kanseninu was already looking at her as a conquest, planning to strike a hard deal with her. He knew by scent that she was older than he was, a longtime mother and unmarried for centuries, yet she was not past the point where she might bear more pups and Kanseninu surely relished the thought of adding his genes with hers, to becoming the patriarch of both the Northern and Western Lands…

Shiroihana stayed quiet and demure as Kanseninu ordered his troops to depart. Hours passed as the sky began to lighten as warriors separated and headed north, wandering into the mountain passes. Each symbolically laid his armor and some of his weapons before Kaseninu and Shiroihana as a sign of their loyalty and obedience. They grinned at their leader and winked at Shiroihana, deriving a cruel amusement at her predicament. The rumor had passed from the wolf quickly throughout their ranks that Shiroihana had come to be gutted in the name of peace, having no other choice but to undergo such humiliation because she had lost her son, the Lord of the Western Lands and she was unfit to replace him.

Shiroihana felt her pulse quickening, thrashing just under the skin of her neck. She let Kanseninu see her nervousness, let him smell it in her sweat. It would build his lust, his sense of power, for he didn't see her as a threat. He saw her as a victim who he would lay deeper into ruin, cleaving her in two. She endured the warrior's unspoken taunts until most of them had left and her patience finally gave out.

"Lord Kanseninu." She bowed when she addressed him after the sky had turned pink with the rising of the sun. "I must rejoin the armies further south and disband them. Let us discuss our pact quickly and I will swear my loyalty to you."

"Very well." He dismissed the rest of his warriors, which numbered only a handful, and retreated back to the hill with its thick copse of underbrush and trees still shaded from the dawn sun.

Shiroihana let Kanseninu lead the way, watching as he picked out a good spot and scuffed the dirt and grass with his boots, trying to clear it as a spot for him to sit comfortably during their deliberation. Shiroihana glanced quickly behind her, back toward the winding hills, scattered trees, the upturned soil that marked where the army had been. There was no sign or smell of the warriors. Seemingly none of them had waited to try and spy on their lord taking advantage—in whatever way he chose—of the Lady of the Western Lands.

Kanseninu grunted as he knelt down. "Come and join me, Lady Shiroihana…"

"Gladly," she replied and lunged forward, flicking her fingers, letting the whip fly from her fingertips in a sinuous, green-glow. It snapped like the sudden crack of thunder and caught Kanseninu's long, lanky neck, coiling about it like a constrictor.

He gagged and cried out with alarm and shock. Shiroihana tugged and he fell over onto his back. His clawed hands slashed at the whip and the green light flickered as his aura clashed with her own.

"Before you die I would like you to know, fool, that my son is very much alive. You have disbanded your armies and ended your cowardly uprising before any further shame came on any of those involved in it. But you and your clan will suffer greatly for your needless ambition."

Kanseninu's gray eyes had expanded and bugged out, ready to pop out of their sockets with his shock and with the pressure of the whip about his neck. His tongue stuck out and he gagged sickeningly.

One of his hands flew to his waist and pulled on his sheathed sword. If he could free it the sword would be able to snap the ethereal energy in Shiroihana's whip. She jerked her arm, hauling him in a sudden motion over the dirt and grass. Kanseninu gurgled with despair as the sword slipped out of his fingers.

He landed heavily, thumping on the ground. Shiroihana grabbed his wrist and lifted him up with a small grunt of effort. His legs kicked at hers but Shiroihana maneuvered him so that his blows found nothing but dirt. She released the whip with a quick wiggle of her fingers. It disappeared like an extinguished candlelight. As Kanseninu gasped at the air, Shiroihana punched her other hand through his back and out his chest on the other side. His gasp became a wet rasp and then a gurgle.

Shiroihana pushed him away. He collapsed and shuddered on the ground. Blood pumped and hissed, pouring from the massive wound in his chest. Shiroihana watched him warily as she flicked her hand, sending a spray of blood droplets in a wide arc around her.

Kanseninu tried to rise to his feet. His hands clutched weakly at the hold in his chest. He let out a wet cough and blood flew out of his mouth in a fountain of crimson. Shiroihana had aimed her blow precisely, a destructive hit to the lungs. Not even an inuyoukai could survive massive blood loss and a ruined lung. One or the other might have been survivable, but together with such a massive wound it was a death sentence. Even one as great as Inutaisho had ultimately succumbed to blood loss.

Kanseninu collapsed as the blood began to slow. He was running out of it. His breathing cut off abruptly though his mouth and muscles still jerked with the remnants of stubborn life. Finally he stilled though the blood continued to dribble out of his horrible wound. The stink of death claimed him, an indescribable mixture of blood and putrefaction as cells died and the soul fled.

Shiroihana walked to the spot where the wolf had partially undressed her. She had left meidou-seki there as it were a weapon. Now she picked it up and reverently slipped it over her head. Her bloodied hand left smudges of brown-red from Kanseninu's blood and Shiroihana frowned with disgust. She would retreat to the Kosetsu province in the Western Lands and her personal palace to bathe as soon as she had delivered Kanseninu's head to Daken and Oushi.

She let the whip fly out again, wrapping around Kanseninu's neck where the flesh was still warm. When it was coiled tight enough she jerked her hand in a swift, precise motion and the whip sliced effortlessly through his flesh, muscle, and bone. The head flopped and rolled to just a foot from her feet on the uneven grass. The gray eyes stared up at her in a lifeless pantomime of shock. She stooped and picked it up by its hair, a macabre handbag, and started walking at a quick pace toward the south where her generals and Sesshomaru's army waited.

* * *

"She has been sleeping since then?" Shimofuri asked. He was at Rin's bedside, staring down into her pale face, which was contorted by a small frown of pain.

Tsukiyume nodded. She said quietly, "I think this is the natural sleep of the wounded. I have not tried to wake her but she moves and talks in her sleep as if she's dreaming. She didn't do that before. It was nothing but a deathly stillness when Lady Shiroihana first brought her in."

Gently, and with great caution, Shimofuri peeled the cover back from Rin's side and stared at the red stain on her robes. "The blade wasn't poisoned, was it?"

"No," Tsukiyume murmured. "I haven't smelled any poison and Lady Rin has not suffered a fever."

"We should remove the blade," Shippo said, speaking for the first time.

Shimofuri dropped the covers, covering the bloodstain. He glanced at the young fox and noted absently the closeness between his sister and the fox. They sat side by side, their thighs and knees almost touching. When he had first entered the room they had been on opposite sides of the bed watching over Rin. Now they addressed him almost as one unit. He cleared his throat and asked, "What makes you say that?"

"She woke up and the lady said she wouldn't be possessed anymore when that happened so..." The kit had guessed by the strange reverence that his companions displayed for Lady Shiroihana—the inuyoukai woman he hadn't really seen but understood from Tsukiyume to be Sesshomaru's mother—that they trusted Shiroihana's word and experience. "Her body is trying to heal but the blade will hold her back. It can't be comfortable."

"The wound is closed," Tsukiyume muttered. Her ears fell flat against the black curtain of her long hair. "We would have to cut it open to get it out."

Shimofuri remained impassive, hiding the distress the thought caused him. As an inuyoukai now Rin would recover from such an injury, but Shimofuri knew that Sesshomaru would never look kindly on him for ordering such a procedure. Yet he could sense the wisdom of the fox's words. He nodded, coming to a swift decision. "I'll have to send for the physician. Sesshomaru is recovering more each day. We need Lady Rin to be awake."

Tsukiyume and Shippo bowed, showing their respect as he left the room, sliding the door shut behind him. With a heavy sigh, Shimofuri walked for the nearest flight of stairs to head up to the floor where he had heard from the maids that Ginrei was waiting with Hanone, sitting awkwardly outside her sickly husband's door. Of all of the things he had to do upon his return to his castle, this was the lowest on his list. He fought to control the twist of anxiety in his gut with each step that he took, drawing nearer to where Ginrei was waiting.

When he reached it, Shimofuri found that his earlier words to Shippo and Tsukiyume had been truer than he'd realized. The door to the room that had been Sesshomaru's throughout his illness and unplanned stay in Shimofuri's castle stood wide open, almost demanding that visitors and curious onlookers should step inside. Bright morning light, colored white-gold, streamed into the hallway from that room. A maid left in such a hurried state that she nearly tripped as she caught sight of Shimofuri lurking in the hall. She was carrying a tray of food and tea. She nearly dropped it as she fell into a deep bow and begged his pardon. Shimofuri sent her on her way absently, distracted by the open doorway to Sesshomaru's room.

Another maid, this one older and gruffer, spilled out of the doorway, colliding with Shimofuri. She fell with a small shout, dropping the rolled up futon mattress she was carrying. Yet another maid waited behind her, holding a bundle of bed linens. Both of them exclaimed with surprise at his presence and dropped into low, apologetic bows.

Shimofuri leaned to one side and peered past them into the room. The windows were all open, the wooden slats removed. A mirror had been erected and robes set out. Sesshomaru was nowhere to be seen—but standing in front of one of the windows opposite the open door was Ginrei, staring out into the day. Hanone was peeking over her shoulder and making little noises, barks, giggles, and growls as she watched the flurry of maids moving around her.

"Excuse me," Shimofuri said, addressing the maids that were still bowed and waiting for his acknowledgement. "What's happening here? Where is Sesshomaru?"

"Lord Sesshomaru has gone to the baths," the older maid replied. "Please forgive us—was this not allowed?"

"It's fine," Shimofuri reassured them. He saw the way Ginrei turned her hips and her head slightly and Hanone pointed a plump, clawed finger at him and knew both mother and daughter had heard him. When he spoke next he made sure to adopt polite language and as much courtesy as he could, unsure of how Ginrei would react. "Lord Sesshomaru and his family are my most honored guests. It has been my honor to protect him during this time."

The maids could have cared less about this explanation and were already halfway slinking away. They tossed quizzical glances between one another and then at Shimofuri's back as he moved past them into the room.

It had a musty smell, a dirty smell. It was a room that had clearly been the site of a traumatic illness. It contained layers of Sesshomaru's scent: a human's sweat, a hanyou's shed hair, and the full inuyoukai's saliva left on chopsticks from a meal. Or was it pureblooded? There was still a fragment of something human in it, a trace that Sesshomaru's powerful immune system had not yet reclaimed. _He is not fully well, _Shimofuri realized, _but very nearly. Perhaps by sundown he will be himself once more. The recovery is quickening. _With dry amusement, as a maid came in with another set of clothing for Sesshomaru, white hakama this time, he thought it would benefit him to send Sesshomaru on his way. Now that he was recovering he was exerting too much control over the servants. Soon the castle might become his if Shimofuri didn't take charge and send his "guest" on his way.

Ginrei surprised him by speaking first. "Lord Sesshomaru has assured me that he will not sign Shiroihana's proposal."

"Her proposal for adopting Hanone?" Shimofuri inquired, seeking clarity. Could it be true that Sesshomaru would deny everything his mother told him out of spite, including Rin? Shimofuri found the idea unbelievable.

"Yes," Ginrei said. "He will not set his name to a document that takes my daughter from me. It is his right as her father."

Shimofuri blurted, "It was never my intention to harm you, my lady. I took part in Shiroihana's ploy to do what I felt was right. When we saw that Lady Rin had transformed we knew he would toss you away. I thought of how badly it would insult you, of how much it would hurt you, and I agreed to help her deceive him. It was not done to harm you, it was to manipulate Sesshomaru."

She was a petite woman and the grayish robes she was wearing were thin and bland, making her all the more diminutive, perhaps even pathetic. Her hair was silvered, a slightly darker shade from Sesshomaru's snowy white. Hanone had a whiter shade, that of her father's, but her eyes were the same silver as Ginrei's, as were the colors of the stripes over her cheeks. As Shimofuri met her young, uncomprehending gaze, she smiled.

"Lady Shiroihana assured me that her adoption would only be in name. She has no desire to take Hanone from you, Lady Ginrei."

"Do you really believe that?" Ginrei asked, laughing bitterly. She turned around to face him, shifting Hanone in her arms at the same time, making the little girl growl irritably and mumble her mother's name reprovingly.

Before he could think about the consequences, Shimofuri gave her the truth. "No, if I had to think about it, no. I believe she has the capacity to take Hanone as her own. Why she would want to do such a thing I don't know. She is a very…" he struggled for the right word that would not prove too insulting. "…difficult."

Ginrei was silent, but her eyes roved over him, searching for something. Shimofuri waited tensely, wondering what she was thinking as her silvered eyes moved, drawing him in. Shimofuri recalled the first time he had seen her, singed and smeared with ash, knelt in snow that was dappled by blood. She had been the first found to be unrelated to Sesshomaru in a long line of female kin that were examined by Shimofuri and Sasugainu's plundering army. Because of this bit of luck—though at the time Shimofuri had only pitied her and thought it a terrible curse—her life was spared and her female kin were slaughtered all around her.

He saw with sudden clarity the way that past had shaped the current inuyoukai woman that stood before him, pressing her daughter close to her shoulder and breast, unwilling to break their contact even if it were truly only in name. Hanone had become all of the slaughtered family that Ginrei had lost that night in the fire and by the swords of the conquering army—an army that Shimofuri and Sesshomaru had had equal parts in leading. He had agreed to deceive her to punish Sesshomaru and with the intention saving Ginrei from his mistreatment, but really he had only heaped cruelty upon cruelty.

The desire to save her, to hold her and protect her the way she clung to Hanone, enveloped him again but Shimofuri battled it away, trying to think without emotion. What was truly best for Ginrei? Was it in her interests to leave Sesshomaru behind and join him? Marrying him had killed Amagumori.

He spluttered, "I have done you a great wrong…"

Ginrei lifted her eyebrows high into her forehead but she said nothing, letting Shimofuri speak onward unhindered.

"I will not sign Shiroihana's proposal." He went on in a hushed, strictly formal way, removing himself from the situation. "Lady Ginrei must stay with Lord Sesshomaru. Lady Ginrei deserves only the best, but her life has been undeservedly painful."

"Lord Shimofuri," Ginrei murmured, lowering her gaze in a sort of embarrassment.

"I will call the scribe and have all of the records of the proposal expunged. Lady Ginrei's marriage will be restored and unquestioned…"

Ginrei's jaw flexed, clenching hard. "No."

Shimofuri stayed where he was, his back stiff and his legs heavy as lead. He didn't look at her, only waited to hear if she would speak further before he would risk prompting her for her reasoning.

The silence did its trick, but slowly. Ginrei and Shimofuri stayed silent and tense as three maids swept in and out of the room, carrying more parts of Sesshomaru's wardrobe and then finally one maid, a plump middle-aged woman, bowed and the doorway and called, "Lady Ginrei, it is time for your bath. Lord Sesshomaru will return shortly to dress."

Quietly, while gazing at Shimofuri with a distant, saddened expression, Ginrei said, "Lord Sesshomaru will not keep Rin as a concubine. She has always come before me. She has been the master and wife of his heart from the beginning." She drew in a shaky breath. "I will only be a bother to him, especially now. But I believe Lord Sesshomaru is the only one that can truly protect Hanone from Shiroihana."

Shimofuri glanced at Hanone in Ginrei's arms. The girl's head was nodding as she tried to fall asleep, her messy white hair spilling forward. "I would gladly adopt Hanone as my daughter. Shiroihana has no hold over me. She is not my mother."

This reminder, that Sesshomaru was perhaps more vulnerable to Shiroihana then an outsider like Shimofuri, set Ginrei's face blank with shock. She was silent for several thick, heavy seconds. Then she said, "Perhaps Lord Shimofuri would discuss this further with me later today, after my bath?"

The thought of the moist, warm, steamy bath and of Ginrei lacking her clothes made Shimofuri's scalp burn. He tried with minimal success to hide the scarlet blush that crept up from his throat. He ducked his head in a deeper bow than was necessary. "Of course, my lady."

* * *

The physician moved from one bedside to another. First he visited Inuyasha and Miroku and used the same smelly concoction to wake her a second time, then he left to perform the surgery on Rin with Shippo and Tsukiyume helping.

In the room with Jaken and the hostage boy Boroya, Inuyasha and Miroku ate with Saya and tried to keep her from falling asleep again, but it was a difficult task. The girl would sit upright and then begin to lower her head and close her eyes as her body became terribly heavy. Jaken harped on her and his yelling worked better than anything else. The high, nails-on-chalkboard quality of his voice was able to act like a pinch inside her brain, turning the lights back on. The physician had found nothing obvious that would make her prone to unconsciousness, no fever or any other sign of illness, but he did remark on the paleness of the crescent moon in her forehead and the brownness of her eyes, the loss of the amber color that he recognized as being her natural color as Sesshomaru's daughter.

Finally the fox, Aojiroi, came and met with them. Saya recognized him with dread and screamed with panic. She hid inside Inuyasha's haori while he was in the room and Boroya, still under the furs on the futon, watched with unabashed fascination.

When Miroku showed the fox the white stone, Aojiroi nodded instantly with memory. "I had come to Lord Sesshomaru's palace to invite him to Lord Shimofuri's wedding," he explained. "Saya asked me for an example of magic, so I gave her the stone. I may have exaggerated its powers."

"What does it do?" Miroku asked.

Behind the monk Inuyasha was sitting with Saya in his haori, a large lump. He poked at her and asked loudly, "Are you awake in there, kid?"

The lump nodded in answer.

"It has several abilities, but they only become available after the power within the stone has adapted to the aura of the carrier. That can take weeks. It is able to absorb the carrier's energy and expend it in their defense. After long training and practice the stone can render the carrier invisible to protect them, and it can even be used to change shape."

"It drew on Saya's energy?" Inuyasha repeated, growling.

"That is the only explanation I have," Aojiroi admitted. "When I gave it to her I did not believe she would have reason to use it so soon and so young! The stone must have sensed her life was in danger and used what little youkai power she had to fend off the danger."

"Will she recover?" Jaken squawked. He tapped his claws together and whimpered pathetically. "Lord Sesshomaru is going to _kill _me if she was permanently harmed!"

"You?" Inuyasha snapped. "He's been trying to kill me since I was born! I'm the one he'll blame." Then he chuckled with a dark enjoyment and smirked with memory. "Of course right now he wouldn't stand any chance since he's as naked and toothless as a newborn rat."

"You—you—you…" Jaken was so appalled by Inuyasha's description of his majestic, beautiful lord that he couldn't find an insult that was harsh enough to do the hanyou justice. Finally he spat, "Half-breed! You take that back!"

Inuyasha's ears laid flat with irritation. "Shut the fuck up, stupid toad."

"Listen to you!" Jaken puffed, horrified. "First you poison Lord Sesshomaru with your words, then you pour more poison into little Saya's ears! And the boy too! He's listening to your foul mouth. What kind of mother allowed you to speak in such a way?"

"Feh," he grunted. "Mom was a high-class lady. I learned this shit after she passed away. Idiot. What kind of she-toad pushed you out?"

"Common-bred mutt!" Jaken spluttered. "Pond scum!"

Inuyasha made a fist and bopped the imp over the head, knocking him out cold. From the furs behind them the inuyoukai boy laughed gleefully.

"So we should return the stone to Saya?" Miroku asked the fox.

Aojiroi nodded. "It can do her no harm currently, and it may help to waken her. It is possible it has retained some of her energy and when she holds it again it may return to her." He smiled reassuringly. "There is almost certainly no permanent damage. She will recover in time."

After Aojiroi had left Miroku and Inuyasha gave the stone back to Saya, encouraging her to hold it. She did so, examining it sleepily with a little smile. "I remember this…" she murmured through thick lips.

While Jaken was in the back of the room begrudgingly entertaining Boroya with a fairytale of some kind, and rubbing his painful head, Miroku spoke in a quiet voice to Inuyasha. "Perhaps Saya's sleepiness could be used to our advantage."

"What are you talking about?" Inuyasha asked, staring at the monk clearly as if he thought his longtime friend had gone crazy.

"While Saya is sleepy in this way she is calm. You could gradually get her accustomed to Sesshomaru and Lady Rin again. She could see in her calm, dreamlike state that they mean no harm. Then she may be able to let go of you and return to her real family."

Inuyasha frowned, skeptical. "That's stupid."

"It's worth a try, is it not? I'd like to get back to my family sooner rather than later."

"I ain't leaving until Saya is safe—and good and ready to stay here alone." Inuyasha pulled open his haori and peeked in on Saya where she had dozed off, curled into a ball in his lap, sheltered and surrounded by his scent and his touch.

Miroku sighed heavily. "Inuyasha," he said.

"What?" the hanyou barked.

"You have grown too protective of her." He lowered his voice and let it take on the air of a dark warning. "_You are not her father. _Saya isn't your daughter. When we leave she won't be _alone._"

Inuyasha's ears fell flat, hid face twisted with a silent snarl. "She's my _niece,_ Monk. I'm not dumb."

Miroku nodded as if humoring an ignorant child. "Will you be able to remember that when Sesshomaru and Rin want her back?"

A hard, pained expression entered Inuyasha's eyes. His ears stayed pinned backward. "Leave it alone, Miroku," he growled.

"Very well." the monk sighed and withdrew. He adopted an air of good humor and changed the subject, but Inuyasha stayed sour, haunted inwardly by Miroku's words.

* * *

A/N: wa! Life has been interesting later. My dad has whooping cough so we were all on antibiotics, I'm waiting on news about my Graduate Assistantship if I get one or not, a new LOST is on (a wonderful present for my borthday!) and then I will be enslaved by Resident Evil 5. I am such a loser. Happy trails!


	37. A Place Beside Him

A/N: I come to you now, at LONG last (and for that delay I do apologize), as a graduate of Northern Michigan University, Bachelor of Science—English Writing was my major and Biology my minor. Before that finals were insane and I was nearly out of my mind! Ugh. Then graduation, trouble with my mom because my littlest sister's prom was on the same frikin day as my college graduation and she wasn't sure she could commit to both, and if one had to suffer, it was my ceremony which represented 30,000 something dollars and four years. Anyway…and then a week ago today my boyfriend of nearly 4 years now proposed to me with a gold band with seven little oval cut diamonds. I was suspicious he would but it was still a bit of a shock. Then he had his wisdom teeth taken out Monday (which was the next day after he proposed) and I spent the first half of this week visiting him and taking care of him…So yeah…I apologize!

Also, I am typing on a new laptop, a graduation present from my very generous father. So my typing is sucking a little as I am still getting used to this new keyboard and it's slightly larger keys.

Disclaimer: I don't own them.

Last Chapter: Shiroihana killed the rogue inuyoukai army leader from the North, Kanseninu. Shimo met up with Ginrei and had a much needed talk, agreeing not to take Hanone from her. The physician visited Saya again and woke her while the fox Aojiroi assured them that the white stone Shiroihana passed to Shimo to give to Saya would actually help her rather than harm. IY and Miroku gave it to her. Jaken is babysitting the hostage inuyoukai boy Boroya, son of Yamome from the north. And Miroku is concerned, rightly so, that Inuyasha is a little too protective of Saya. Sess is mostly recovered and we didn't see him last chapter, but he was bathing.

* * *

**A Place Beside Him  
**

A sudden pain pierced Rin's side, scattering her dreams. She had existed in a gentle world of escape, flitting through Jouka palace with Saya in her arms as an infant. She saw Sesshomaru round a corner and gaze at her, felt the weight of the liquid gold in his irises, thrilling and alarming at once.

Then the pain tore into her, startling in its sharpness. The dream images around her cracked and warped, trying to change to accommodate the pain, to weave it into an illusion that would keep her brain occupied. It didn't work.

She jerked out of that other world of soft colors, impressions, and sounds. Rin found herself staring into a fox's knee. She knew with absolute certainty that it was a fox, but just how she knew that escaped her. Rin couldn't see his face, only the green fabric of his pants and the tawny hair and fur on his paws as well as the fluff of his tail beyond that. She saw his clawed toes digging into the sheets and fabric of the mattress she was lying on and realized that he was exerting force on her shoulder, grunting as he kept her still. Her own muscles were straining, fighting against him.

Rin blinked, baffled as her mind and body gradually rejoined.

More pain pierced her side and with sudden clarity, Rin realized fingers were digging into her flesh, increasing the pain. Wet, sticky warmth oozed from her side onto her back and stomach. She let out a yelp and raised her arms to fight her attackers, but found that the fox was blocking them on one side. Rin turned her head and, as her vision sharpened with wakefulness, she made out the black hair and white ears as well as the distinctive scent of Tsukiyume.

"Tsuki—" she choked.

"Keep her still!" a male voice ordered, gruffly.

The fingers were in her flesh, digging into her. The pain was hot and breath-stealing, but not as intense as she would have expected. Rin's hands curled into fists. She tugged half involuntarily against the restraining grips of both Tsukiyume and the fox—who was also familiar to her but in the stress of the moment he was impossible to place…

"I've got the blade."

Something moved in her side and the disgust that swelled within Rin at the sensation, like parasites twisting in her gut, incited an unthinking rage. She struck out at Tsukiyume, sensing the greatest physical weakness from her as opposed to the full-blooded fox. Her fist and her arm broke free from Tsukiyume's grip when she clobbered the hanyou girl at the base of her neck. The blow knocked Tsukiyume backwards, skidding over the wooden floorboards. The fox boy cried out after her with alarm and Rin felt his hold on her waver. She struck at him as well while simultaneously slashing at the other presence, the man's voice, the thing digging into her side.

As the fox fell away, hopping with all of the speed of his pureblooded ancestry, Rin saw the human man, thin and wiry and absorbed by his work. His hands and fingers were coated in her sticky, half-clotted blood, but there was a fresh flow of it too, bright, hot, and crimson. With an animalistic instinct of self-preservation, Rin struck him in the shoulder. The man screeched with pain. His hands withdrew from burrowing into her side.

Rin sat up, kicking at the sheets and blankets around her, at the towels and cloths that had been laid out to catch her blood. She clutched the open wound at her side and hissed with pain as her palm felt the hardness of the obsidian blade. She pulled at it without hesitation, stifling the desire to cry out at the brief spurt of agony. The blade tumbled out of her hands, slick with red-brown blood. It fell onto the futon mattress, staining the sheets, and then clattered to the flooring closest to the fox.

Voices competed around her, reaching her as the pain, disgust, and animal instincts faded. She saw the fox propping up Tsukiyume, the hanyou girl's white ears flicked and twitched. The physician moaned on the floor and held his shoulder, his face creased with pain while Rin's own was already diminishing.

She took a deep breath and winced slightly at the flex it caused in her wounded side. "What's going on here?"

"You were stabbed," the fox said. Rin gazed at him, recalling with a jolt just who he was.

"Shippo?"

He gave a weak nod. Tsukiyume groaned, her voice laden with pain. She was using the shorter Shippo as a crutch. "My shoulder…"

Rin knew by the way the girl held herself, by the fresh rush of stress hormones in her scent, that her blow had probably broken Tsukiyume's collarbone. Heat swept up over her face and she swallowed thickly. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—"

"That's okay," Tsukiyume muttered through gnashing teeth. "It could have been worse. I'll be better in a few hours."

Rin let out a shaky breath and her hand clutched harder at her side where the wound burned, trying already to close and begin healing. "How long was I sleeping?"

The physician, who had managed to avoid the brunt of Rin's blow to his own shoulder, was able to answer her. "It has been a night since Lady Shiroihana brought you to Lord Shimofuri's castle."

"You woke up once," Shippo said. "Do you remember?"

Tsukiyume added, "You said that Jishin was dead. She possessed your body, but Lady Shiroihana used the knife to purge her presence from you." The hanyou girl's ears swiveled backward and her eyes, already clouded by pain, narrowed with what Rin interpreted as suspicion.

_Jishin would have come to kill Sesshomaru._ Though Tsukiyume's suspicion disturbed Rin, it also pleased her. She recalled Sesshomaru's illness, the dullness of his skin, the dampness of fever-sweat, and the gaps between his teeth where his transformation had robbed him of canines. He had been decrepit, nothing short of on his deathbed. If Jishin had succeeded in her mission it would have surely resulted in his death. Even so, Rin wondered if Sesshomaru would ever recover. Had she been transformed into an inuyoukai in the other realm only to find out that Sesshomaru would never be able to produce pureblooded offspring after his own unnatural illness?

There was yet another reason for concern. She remembered the weight of Saya's limp little body in her arms and suddenly the pain in her side vanished, overwhelmed by something much more important. She reached out for Shippo and Tsukiyume with bloodied hands. "Has Inuyasha come here? Have you seen Saya? Is she safe?"

Shippo leaned back, avoiding the groping, bloody fingertips. "Yeah, Inuyasha and Miroku are here with Saya. The doctor was already there treating her."

"Did Inuyasha see Sesshomaru?" Rin demanded, holding her breath. Inuyasha had insisted on his suspicion that Rin was a shape-shifting fox, out to steal Saya. He had only been willing to trust her if she could bring him to a very much alive and recognizable Sesshomaru. Had he found that?

"Yeah," Shippo muttered, darkly. "Saya didn't recognize him."

Rin withdrew her bloodied hands and shakily wiped them on the clean sheets around her. Her eyes had glazed over. She didn't see the mess she was making. Her thoughts circled on Sesshomaru, on how painful it must have been for him to have his daughter reject him. Hanone hadn't done that—why had Saya? She already knew the answer. Saya had been traumatized by Jishin's attack and by Inuyasha's assumption that Sesshomaru had died. Rin's fingers curled up in the sheets, her claws tore into the thin fabric slightly. _How can she ever recover?_ Since the fire and the earthquake at Jouka Palace the whole world had shattered for all of them, Sesshomaru, Rin, and Saya alike.

And yet Rin had suffered as a young child, losing her parents and her brother first, then struggling for every morsel of food before the wolves had killed her and Sesshomaru had resurrected her into her second life, a life she had vowed to share at his side. Saya had the strength of both her parents within her veins. Surely she could overcome and perservere…

"Take me to Saya," she ordered abruptly.

"You should rest," the doctor murmured roughly. He was still breathing hard, recovering from Rin's attack. The sight of both the doctor and Tsukiyume uncomfortable with pain that she had caused them by being unable to control her own baser instincts sent Rin twitching. She wanted to escape the room, in spite of the pain in her side and the sticky, clotting blood of her wound.

"I've seen Lord Sesshomaru suffer far greater injuries than this and move on seconds later. I've already wasted too much time sitting here."

"You shouldn't go covered in blood," Shippo told her. "Saya won't like it and Sesshomaru won't either."

"Is he recovered?" Rin asked. "Lady Shiroihana counseled me not to reveal my transformation to him before he had—"

"Lady Shiroihana deceived you," Tsukiyume snapped, grimacing, distracted by the pain in her shoulder, aching deep in the bone.

Rin was silent, unsurprised by the news. She had suspected it from the beginning but could see no reason why Shiroihana would do it. "How do you mean?"

Tsukiyume's ears had flattened onto her black hair. Her face was wrinkled heavily with pain. She flashed her teeth in a facsimile of a smile brought on by her pain. Shippo spoke for her, still acting as her crutch. He gestured at the physician. "Get the maids to clean this stuff up and take care of Tsuki. I'll take Rin wherever she wants to go."

Confusion followed Rin like a cloud of insects, buzzing about her head. She held her side, stifling the last of the oozing blood as maids entered, stripping away bloodied cloths, sheets, linens, and covers. The physician urged her behind a screen where he opened the folds of her filthy robe—covered in dirt, mud, blood, and grass stains—and began to bandage her side. Rin listened with her acute hearing to the steps of the maids, and to the whispered conversations between Tsukiyume and Shippo. The fox was still acting as Tsukiyume's crutch while they waited for the bed to be cleared and the linens replaced. It would become Tsukiyume's place to rest again.

"I'm always getting hurt," she whined lightheartedly.

"If you hung out with Inuyasha it would happen _all_ the time! He has a knack for finding trouble. But you'll be better real fast too, just like him. Sesshomaru punched a hole through his stomach once and four days later he was running around with Kagome on his back again. I bet he got a real kick out of seeing Sesshomaru so weak."

"I had the impression he was more worried about Saya than Lord Sesshomaru."

Shippo's reply was lowered, but not quiet enough for it to escape Rin's ears. "He has it in his head that Saya's like his own kid. It's going to be really hard for him to give her up. And Sesshomaru—"

Tsukiyume interrupted him, also in a low whisper, trying to keep Rin from overhearing her where she was hidden from their sight by the screen, being bandaged by the doctor. "I am afraid of how Lord Sesshomaru will act when he sees Lady Rin. I don't know what's going to happen."

Shippo answered her casually. "I wouldn't worry about it."

"But Lady Ginrei…"

Shippo made a hushing sound, as if he understood that Rin could hear them suddenly. Rin realized that the physician had stepped out from the screen carrying the bowl of water that he had used to cleanse his hands. It was colored pink now. Rin pulled her filthy robe up and held it shut with one hand, following the doctor out. She forced her expression to be distant and impassive.

The maids were mostly finished with the bedding. One of them came to stand on Tsukiyume's other side. The doctor bowed to Rin before she had time to notice and excused himself, begging her pardon in quick, overused words before moving to wrap Tsukiyume's shoulder and arm to set the collarbone as best as he could. (A/N: It's still impossible to set a collarbone without surgery. You just can't do it. Basically you just keep your arm and shoulder as still as possible for like…6 weeks. In Tsuki's case it's more like 6 hours or so but still. My fiancé had a broken collarbone when we were in high school.)

As Tsukiyume accepted the maid's help and support, Shippo left her, smiling a silent, short goodbye. A different maid, an elderly woman that Rin recognized from a previous visit, dropped to her knees before Rin. Shippo approached her as well, but the fox didn't bow. His tawny, fuzzy tail flicked like a squirrel's. "Where do you want to go, Lady Rin?"

"The lady must have a bath first," the older maid said. She was plump and kindly. Rin remembered liking her at her last bath. It was when she had arrived in the Nanka from the North and met Shiroihana again for the first time as an adult. It seemed so long ago, but Rin could remember the stress of having Sesshomaru's mother watch her in the bath, the weight of Shiroihana's gaze. A childhood memory flitted past her brain, the first time she had seen Shiroihana. _"Are you going to eat them?"_ Shiroihana had asked Sesshomaru when she'd seen his human companions.

Rin would have shuddered if not for the pain it would have caused her. "There's no time for a bath," she snapped.

Shippo shook his head. "Saya will get scared if you go to her covered in blood."

It was sound advice, but Rin had great difficulty accepting it over the pounding of the bone deep instinct to hold her child and see her living mate with her own eyes. She felt her side and squared her jaw. "No bath. Please," she addressed the maid, "get me a clean robe. I'll wash up a little and change but nothing else. No delays." Shiroihana had delayed her before, had deceived her somehow…

As the maid left, Rin stared at Shippo and cleared her throat. "Tell me what I've missed. How did Lady Shiroihana deceive me? And what were you saying about Ginrei?"

The fox made a face and sighed reluctantly. "I don't think I even know all of it."

"Then tell me everything you do know."

* * *

Shimofuri retired to a room he used as a study and summoned the scribe. He was uncomfortable, filled with a tenseness that he didn't understand, and a desire to rectify any wrongs he had committed within the last few days. His mind stayed preoccupied with thoughts of Ginrei, who was bathing with Hanone on the castle's lower level. The noise of the scribe grinding the ink, mixing it, and then gathering his brushes, was distant and disturbing. It was like listening to mice nibbling in the walls. Shimofuri fidgeted and tried to clear his mind and focus on just what he wanted done.

Messengers had caught him in the hall to tell him that word had come from the generals, Oushi and Daken, that Shiroihana had successfully returned with Kanseninu's head. His armies were disbanded. There would be peace, but at a high cost for the clan, just as Shiroihana had always known.

Thinking of the Mother of the Western Lands perturbed Shimofuri. Her manipulation, her foresight, her constant scheming…he could suddenly pity Sesshomaru and understand him. In a way, he and Sesshomaru were more alike in that way than they could have ever guessed. Shimofuri's mother, the albino Taikokajin, had been nearly insane toward the end. Her manipulative schemes had tried to steal Inuyasha's son from him, and it had cost her life. She had been a loving mother, but somewhere along the line it clouded her judgment. When Tsukiyume was kidnapped she had lost most of her sanity.

Was Shiroihana the same way? Shimofuri found himself despising her, but doubting that she would ever succumb to insanity like Taikokajin had. Shiroihana's actions had all been done with an eerie, cold intelligence. He prayed he would never come under her influence or be part of her manipulating schemes ever again, but somehow he doubted he would be that lucky.

"My lord," the scribe said, interrupting Shimofuri's rumination. "I am ready to begin. What must be done?"

Shimofuri threw a quick glance at the parchment lying on the scribe's little desk. Characters jumped out to him, scrawled in the human's sharp calligraphy. _Annulment. Betrothal. Alliance. Middle Lands. Kosetsu. Shinkumaru Shiroihana. _He sighed and tapped the claws of one hand on his knee. Shiroihana was right about the clans splintering, dying out. Shiroihana's plans would spread out the genes; preserve the lines in the north with new marriages and alliances. The clans could prosper…

_I made a promise to her._

"There is a note in the record about Sesshomaru's daughter, Hanone."

The scribe nodded without looking. "Yes?"

"It concerns her adoption in name to a specific province of the Western Lands and to Lady Shiroihana." He paused for a moment and let himself imagine the aforementioned inuyoukai woman sitting before him. She would be _most_ displeased with him. "Scratch it. Blot it out."

"Yes, my lord." The scribe selected a brush and dipped it into the ink. As he set the ink down to the paper, the scribe, a middle aged man with a crooked back, asked, "Is there anything else?"

"A betrothal to Boroya, of the Northern Lands. Take that out as well. And anything else pertaining to Hanone."

The scribe was working fast, but reading before his brush made each stroke—it would be painful to make a mistake. It meant hours of recopying the parchment. "There is a note on her inheritance." He quoted from the manuscript, "_In the event that Lord Sesshomaru should die without a proper male heir, Hanone will inherit the Western Lands._"

"Scratch that as well. Sesshomaru and Lady Ginrei can work that out at another time."

"Is that all?" the scribe asked while his brush still worked.

Shimofuri clenched his jaw, thinking. Ginrei had told him that her marriage should be annulled, but she did not say she had approved the idea of aligning herself with him. Shimofuri sighed and muttered a last order to the scribe. "There is also an arranged marriage between myself and Lady Ginrei. Strike that."

"That makes this document very bare," the scribe commented. "It is really only a marriage annulment now."

Shimofuri nodded. "I know. That may change later. I may have need of your skills again later today." The action of destroying Shiroihana's record, made in deception and lies, which he had knowingly taken part of, was more cleansing than it was practical. He would be certain that Ginrei was treated properly, the way she had deserved from the beginning. She wouldn't be tricked into marrying him. He would seek her agreement and go through any and all tradition ceremony to please her and show his devotion.

He had the ominous feeling, almost a precognition, that she would need it. He had removed every part in the document that pertained to Hanone at all, but somehow Shimofuri knew that ink would not change what Shiroihana had planned. She was too smart, too calculating. One day Ginrei would find herself parted from her precious Hanone against her will, against everyone's will because none of them were a match for Shiroihana. Not even Sesshomaru. She was the woman that had outlived and even outdone Inutaisho himself.

* * *

Rin climbed the stairs to the upper level where Sesshomaru had been housed within the Nanka castle for the duration of his grueling illness. She clasped her side, pressing against it to hold back the pain and keep it from reopening. Her discomfort was minimal considering how deep the wound had gone, how much blood she had seen on the sheets and on her fingers, and by the fact that the doctor hadn't stitched it because it was already closing. It was no longer bleeding actively, but it was weeping onto the bandage, making Rin feel damp and sweaty.

She had changed into a white robe that she was fairly certain belonged to Tsukiyume. It was simple and loose, tying only with a baby blue sash. The maid that was still following her had combed out her hair while Shippo talked with her, filling in everything that he could. As Rin washed her hands, arms, neck, and her face, she realized that Saya was safe. Saya was protected. She had not been flattering her mate's half brother when she called him the finest guardian Saya could have. It was true. She had little doubt that Inuyasha would die for Saya unquestioningly if he had to.

But while Inuyasha was playing father to her daughter, Rin felt increasingly aware of Sesshomaru, Saya's real father, alone and probably infuriated with heartbreak. She had learned since her first visit to him when he was ill, completely human in his sickbed. Now scents not only stood out to her, but auras as well. Sesshomaru's had been increasingly potent. Even as Shippo described Sesshomaru to her as being mostly human when he had seen him mere hours ago, Rin knew the fox was wrong. Sesshomaru was changing fast. As a human he might have tolerated Inuyasha's presence with Saya, but now he would be stewing, angry, and ready to slash his brother's throat to get Saya back.

She was not at her prettiest or her most ornate, but Rin was determined to meet her mate in her new form and take her place beside him. Perhaps, as one unit, they could convince Saya that they really were her parents and not shape shifting imposters. Underlying that concern was her mounting frustration with what Shippo had told her about Ginrei. Husband and wife had probably bonded, and apparently they were united in disgust for the grand deception that Shiroihana had orchestrated. Would her change from human to inuyoukai prove disconcerting enough for Sesshomaru that he would choose to keep Ginrei as his wife?

When Shippo had discussed this with her, Rin unwittingly revealed her own uncertainty as to just how Sesshomaru would react. The kit had cocked his head and laughed at her expression. Rin held onto that laughter. _It is silly for me to think my transformation has changed anything. It has almost certainly only strengthened his decision to give Ginrei to Shimofuri._

The maid, trailing behind her, puffed on the stairs, racing up and around Rin to open doors for her. Rin herself was not winded from the climb, but her face was contorted with the stress of the fresh wound in her side. She had not had the lessons in stoniness that Sesshomaru and many of the other inuyoukai had received from birth.

The maid knelt and slid open the door to Sesshomaru's room. It was bright inside with the windows open. The day outside was warm and cheerful. Songbirds were singing somewhere distantly, and above them humans were walking, talking, and going about their daily routines. Rin could hear them and smell them before she had even walked into the room, the information floating to her on the humid afternoon breeze. Sesshomaru's scent overpowered all of those underlying details, blotting them out so that Rin was only peripherally aware of them. The maid was still knelt on the floor, but even she was invisible to Rin now as she stepped into the room.

There were multiple layers of scents in the room, a dizzying array. Rin's nose focused on the present only, blocking the others. Sesshomaru's scent was powerful like wood smoke from a fire, impossible to ignore. There was food in the room, a raw fish of some kind and some stewed vegetables. Rin smelled it before she saw it: an afternoon meal laid out on trays, three of them. Sesshomaru, Ginrei, and Hanone were sharing a meal.

The little scene, distinctly domestic, nauseated Rin immediately in spite of herself. Sesshomaru sat with his back to the door, a show of confidence on his part, a silent proclamation that he was well enough and strong enough to turn and slash through any threat that could come for him now. His robes were clean, as were Ginrei and Hanone's. They sat beside one another, facing the door. Ginrei looked up when the door opened, as did Hanone. Sesshomaru was alert, Rin could tell from the straightness of his back and the stillness of his hands, but he did not turn at once to look at her.

Ginrei's silvered eyes widened. "Lady Rin," she murmured a halfhearted greeting.

"Rin!" Hanone repeated, not using a title. She grinned. Her fingers were slimy with fish oil and her tray was a mess. "Where's Sister?"

Rin struggled inwardly to find her voice and was surprised by how confident and quick the words were. "That's something you can help me with, Hanone. Saya's afraid to come and see us right now. She's with your uncle." Even as she spoke she was still taking in Sesshomaru, gauging how recovered he truly was. His scent told her he was nearly pureblooded again, but physically he had not completed the transformation. His hair was white but only fell to his shoulders. His claws looked short and stubby and the splashes of purple-red color at his wrists were paler than she thought they should be.

"You are wounded," Sesshomaru said, speaking for the first time.

Rin held her breath as he twisted his neck to look at her. The marks on his cheeks were pale like the ones on his wrists, but the crescent moon was its normal deep purple. His eyes were the full golden of the hawk that had always thrilled and unnerved her.

She wanted to reply shortly with sarcasm, to say: _I see your sense of smell is back!_ But she restrained her impulsive comment, knowing her irritation was because of Ginrei's presence, the threat she felt. Was it warranted? Was Ginrei trying to replace her? The desire to be angry and aggressive was hard and sharp, difficult for Rin to contend with. She remembered lashing out instinctively at the physician and Tsukiyume and held herself in check. It was difficult for her to distinguish between powerful instinct and legitimate emotions now. How did Sesshomaru and the others contend with it their whole lives?

"I'm fine," she murmured.

"You're hungry," Ginrei observed, also using her sense of smell. Hunger was a particularly sharp smell, metallic or sour on one's breath. Rin could smell her own scent and knew she likely reeked of it now that she had been awake for more than a few minutes.

Hunger overpowered her discomfort. "Yes. I can't remember when I ate last."

Ginrei got to her feet and smoothly came to her side and touched her arm with a motion that couldn't be anything but affection. "Take my spot." The two women locked gazes and Rin saw Ginrei's darkened eyes, troubled but not truly hostile. It was an unreadable mixture that only increased Rin's nausea. She was about to pull away and accept Ginrei's offer when the other inuyoukai woman whispered, "Lord Sesshomaru has been waiting for you…"

There was something unspoken in Ginrei's sentence that Rin didn't miss. She paused a moment longer and felt her body's tenseness starting to fade. The circumstances between Ginrei and Rin had often pitted them against each other, but Rin had always known that underneath it they had the potential for great friendship. There had been many times when Ginrei was jealous of Rin for her exalted position, but she had never looked down on Rin for being merely human or for holding Sesshomaru's heart.

It was not ambition or jealousy that Rin saw now, but a distant sadness. Even if Sesshomaru had been willing to keep her, Ginrei had never really had any designs on his heart. There was affection between them, more now than perhaps at any other time, but it could not compare with what Rin had.

Rin realized that what Ginrei had meant to say was _Sesshomaru has been waiting for you all his life._ Ginrei was only keeping the spot warm.

She sat down where Ginrei had been and found the food almost untouched. Apparently Ginrei hadn't been hungry or had already heard that Rin was coming when she'd had the tray laid out. Hanone grinned up at Rin and held out a hand with a roll of raw fish meat on it. "Want some?"

"No, thank you Hanone." Rin shook her head and then slowly lifted her eyes to look at Sesshomaru where he sat across from her. First she took in his tray and his lower body. His food was mostly gone but he still held chopsticks in one hand idly. The skin of his hands and arms, what little she could see poking out of the sleeve, was flawless and smooth. Then her eyes flew to his face, only the second time she had seen him since coming into the room.

He was staring at her unblinkingly, searching her face with an open longing that brought the heat rushing into Rin's cheeks. "Lord Sesshomaru," she greeted him, whispering.

A subtle change took place in his amber eyes, a lightening. His lips twitched and parted slightly. The new expression, although tiny, was one of awe. The last time she had seen that awe had been when he came to visit her after leaving her at Jouka as a child. He had left her a child and returned to find her a young woman of marriageable age, riding a horse, painting her face to be fierce like a youkai warrior. It was the same look that had marked the moment he had realized on a deep, primal level that he could not give her away as a daughter, but had to take her as his mate.

Hanone laughed and started to sing a rhyming song of nonsense about the weather, a little song that Rin had taught Saya and then Saya had shared with Hanone. The moment, the stare between Rin and Sesshomaru faded. The world rushed back in.

Ginrei was standing by the door, watching them with a distant, melancholy stare. She cleared her throat after a moment and approached Sesshomaru. She dropped into a bow and began excusing herself. "I would like to go and speak with Lord Shimofuri. I would also like to take Hanone with me."

She was asking permission—but at the same time it was not a question, it was a statement. Rin sensed an underlying conversation that she had missed, a change between them of some artificial separation.

Sesshomaru nodded to her. "Go."

Ginrei scooped Hanone up after wiping at her little clawed hands and her smeared face. Rin ate slowly while she watched the mother and daughter leave, distracted by warring imperatives. She was with her mate, but still uncertain of her place officially—and more so she was worried about Saya. Inuyasha was a fine protector but the longer they delayed in getting her back into their hold again, the harder it would be for Saya to adjust. Rin could only wonder at the implications that the current situation would have on their young daughter.

As soon as the door slid shut behind Ginrei and Hanone, Sesshomaru dropped the chopsticks he had been holding in one hand. Rin felt his eyes boring into her as she scooped rice, bits of meat, and sipped on the vegetable soup. When he was ready to speak, she knew he would do so, but her hands shook as she held her own chopsticks, waiting.

He let out a long, sharp exhalation that startled Rin, nearly making her choke as she swallowed some broth. His words only further put her at risk of choking. "I missed you." After a small pause he added, "There was a time when I thought you had died. At Jouka, in the earthquake."

His chin wrinkled and his brow furrowed, clear signs of his distress, but he surprised her by finishing almost jokingly. "Obviously I was mistaken."

Rin laughed, small and quiet. Her shoulders bounced as her body trembled around her. Sesshomaru continued watching her avidly. There were unanswered questions he surely had for her, but that was unimportant at the present time, as was explaining them. It would all come later.

He reached out to her, touching her chin with blunted claws. Rin lifted her face and stared into his eyes frankly letting him get a clear view of the marks on her cheeks, two jagged shaped ilnes colored turquoise like Shimofuri's. Sesshomaru's eyes narrowed with concentration and he made a short sniffing sound, perhaps rechecking her changed scent. A baffled look crossed his eyes and he pulled his had back from her. It was the first negative reaction he had had to her transformation and Rin sighed, biting her lip as anxiety returned to her.

"My senses are not what they were," Sesshomaru admitted. It was a startling show of his vulnerability. Rin directed her gaze away from him down to the food. She released her chopsticks and flexed her hands, snapping the joints.

"Lord Sesshomaru will recover," she reassured him though her voice was thin and distant.

"Yes," he answered, dully.

Rin plunged forward, eager to bring Sesshomaru's mind to more pressing matters. "We must get Saya back."

A full-fledged frown spread over his lips. "My brother has corrupted her." It was spoken with anger but not with passion.

"It's not his fault. He has been an excellent protector. Saya has been very safe under his care." She leaned forward and let her voice take on a hard, deep intensity to make it clear she was giving him an order, not a suggestion. "He should be commended, not punished."

The corners of Sesshomaru's mouth and his eyes stayed pinched. "He is undeserving of any—"

"He saved our daughter!" Rin raised her voice, nearly shouting. "You are indebted to him, as am I."

Sesshomaru sat back, gaining some distance from Rin. His face had blanked of all expression but his hands were clenched into tight fists. "I am indebted to everyone," he bit out. "I have been reduced to nothing."

Rin stared at him, startled again by his words. She felt the wound in her side stinging and had a sudden flash of insight. _I am hearing the man within him speak, not the inuyoukai. They are one in the same but one speaks with a free tongue. _One was openly vulnerable and less likely to act; the other was cold and immovable, determined and violent. It was the inuyoukai that would have Inuyasha imprisoned for his offence and forcibly take Saya back to the Western Lands. It was the human that would mourn weakness, illness, death, pain, and grief. This was as emotional and open as Sesshomaru could ever be.

"Nothing?" she whispered. "I didn't know the great Lord of the Western Lands could feel sorry for himself!"

Sesshomaru snorted and lifted his chin, affronted by her comment. "How dare you—"

"You have been gravely ill," Rin murmured. "You are still recovering. I am here to make sure you make the right decisions while you are reduced to _nothing_." The last word she added sarcastically, scolding him.

He didn't like this either. "I will not have you as a replacement for my mother!" he hissed.

"I'm not deceiving you, only telling the absolute truth. You cannot attack Inuyasha for protecting Saya while we couldn't." She swallowed, suddenly feeling her throat swell with emotion. "And you cannot blame either of them for bonding. They're kin. If you came upon Inuyasha's children, surely you would protect them too?"

"His offspring are only further insults to our father's blood…" he spat.

"You wouldn't protect them?" Rin asked, leaning closer. "Is that really what Lord Inutaisho would have wanted? They are his grandchildren, just as Saya and Hanone are. Saya herself is an insult to his blood by your reasoning."

"What do you want from me?" Sesshomaru asked, not bothering to hide the bitterness in his voice.

"Patience. We have to be patient with both Inuyasha and Saya to get her back. We must prove to her that we are really her parents, that we love her." She blinked and sniffled, trying to control the sudden tears that came into her eyes. "She thinks we are shape shifting monsters individually. Seeing us together now that you've mostly recovered, it might change her mind."

"My brother has taken her as his own," Sesshomaru growled. "He will not help us."

Rin drew an unsteady breath. "Perhaps he would be more eager to do so if we honored him for his help."

"I never asked for his help!"

Rin let out a short laugh that was more of a bark. Embarrassed, she covered her lips and closed her eyes. Sesshomaru waited for her to speak with a heavy angry silence. Finally Rin spoke past her hand, through her fingers. "Lord Sesshomaru cannot actually believe that Saya would still be alive without Inuyasha's help? And because we did not ask for his help it is all the more important that we thank him for it. He has done it out of true kindness without expecting anything in return."

Sesshomaru was staring over her shoulder with sunken shoulders, weighed down by bitter defeat. "And what would you suggest I give him in return?"

Rin smiled lightly, relieved that she had reached him. "I have an idea."

* * *

A/N: Well more to come...I bet none of you can guess what she plans to give to Inuyasha. I will say this much, it isn't physical. If you really wanted to know before the next update, Chapter 21 of _Innocence_ has the answer. Also, to those of you who have also read _Innocence_ you may be able to see Shimofuri's accurate precognition about just where and who Hanone will be with. Chapter 35 has an example of that, as do other chapters after that. _Innocence_ and _Return_ are very interconnected and I have done my best to have the stories intertwined and for the continuity to be accurate. Basically any chapter in _Innocence_ that involves Sess's family in some way means there will be hints about this story.

So for more Shiroihana action, read _Innocence._ I just love her. She's always a thrill to write too.


	38. Goodbye

A/N: Okay this was a long chapter because I didn't want to break it into two...and since I have been slower to update lately you all deserve a longer chapter. I just wasn't sure how to write the reunion. Anyway here it is. Hmm. Not my best work considering all the interjections life has made as distractions. Whoop!

Disclaimer: I do not own them.

Last Chapter: Shimo basically destroyed Shiroihana's plans. Everything except the annulment between Ginrei and Sess is gone or will be determined later. The doctor, Tsuki, and Shippo operated on Rin to remove the knife that Shiroihana left in her side. Rin ended up taking it out herself. Shippo got her up to speed on things and she went to visit Sess for the first time since he's mostly gotten better. She found him surprisingly emotional, kinda pouting, and eating lunch with Ginrei and Hanone. But Ginrei proved to be little of a threat and Rin ended up discussing plans with Sess on how they should get Saya back.

* * *

**Goodbye**

Nighttime had been unkind to Inuyasha. While Saya slept heavily, resting in the complete peace that could only be attained by small children and the dead, Inuyasha nodded off only fitfully. He had taken up a sitting position near the door, slouching on some plushy cushions that had been placed around the table in the room for sitting. Saya was inside his haori like a baby kangaroo in its mother's marsupial pouch, safe and warm.

Shimofuri had moved them from the room where Jaken was babysitting the inuyoukai boy Boroya. The new room was smaller but just as ornate and well-decorated. Miroku took the futon with one or both of them snoring, but Inuyasha refused to wake Saya up and wouldn't consider sleeping on the futon with the monk and the kit. What if he rolled over in his sleep and suffocated her? Saya was sleeping so heavily, and it seemed the moment he let his guard down something emerged out of the woodwork to attack her or him or whoever was vulnerable.

So it was that when a maid came into their room with tea and rice cakes for a small morning meal Miroku rose to greet her and eat, but Inuyasha lethargically declined. The crunch and slurp as the monk ate and the occasional attempt at conversation kept him awake, but he resisted moving anyway, unwilling to accept that he had to get up and face the ongoing issue at hand: Saya. His dozing dreams had been of Sesshomaru snatching greedily with grubby hands for Koinu, Akisame, or Saya and sometimes even Kagome. Inuyasha was always jumping awake, growling protectively and checking the pouch in his red haori to be certain that Saya was still there.

Shippo had been gone throughout the night, but after the maid came and went with breakfast, Shippo appeared hungry and full of news. He munched loudly on the rice cakes and then tried to lick up every crumb, oddly famished. The irritating noises at last made Inuyasha life his head and glare nastily, not even pretending to sleep anymore.

"Lady Rin is up and awake. The doctor took out the knife in her side." The kit crunched loudly on a rice cake and then chewed audibly. Inuyasha, sitting behind him, bristled at the annoying noise.

"That's excellent news!" Miroku put in, smiling. "Will she be coming to take Saya?"

"No one's taking her anywhere," Inuyasha snapped. When both Miroku and Shippo glanced at him with bafflement, confused at the vehemence in his tone, the hanyou's ears flattened down. "If she doesn't want to go with Rin she doesn't have to," he said, adjusting his meaning. "Not yet anyway."

"Inuyasha," Miroku murmured, clearing his throat cautiously. "Do you remember what I said last night?"

"What, you mean all that damned snoring you did that kept me awake?"

Miroku blinked. "I snore?"

"Feh," Inuyasha grunted.

Frowning, Miroku went on, ignoring Inuyasha's baiting. "I mean about you being overly attached to Saya. She's not—"

"Not my daughter," Inuyasha growled. His golden eyes were darker than usual, almost orange as he glared. "Yeah, I heard you the first time. Did you think I was stupid?"

"You are being really overprotective," Shippo muttered.

Inuyasha's ears shot upright, stiffly, mimicking the motion of his shoulders as rage erupted out of him like lava from Kilauea. "What do you know, runt! What should I have done, huh? Let that bastard brother of mine grab her against her will? I tried to make her recognize him!"

"Yeah, but you know Lady Rin is who she says she is now. You know she was telling the truth. She asked about Saya over and over again." Shippo puffed out a long breath. "Sesshomaru is really upset."

"Feh!" Inuyasha burst into gruff laughter. "He's never been upset in his life!"

Miroku glowered at the hanyou. "You don't honestly believe that do you? I felt his behavior with Saya was clearly—"

"Yeah, just because the guy doesn't cry doesn't mean he doesn't feel miserable!" Shippo interrupted the monk.

"Feh," Inuyasha grumped. "If he was so worried about her, why grab at her? Why scare her so much? Either he doesn't care or he's just fucking dumb."

"I'm not sure whether you're just in some sort of overprotective denial or just being dense," Miroku mumbled. "Either way Saya still isn't your daughter."

The hanyou spluttered, so outraged by Miroku's comments that he couldn't formulate a proper reply. What finally came out was, "Shut the hell up!"

The raised voices at last pierced through Saya's deep sleep. She moaned and moved in the artificial pouch that Inuyasha had provided for her in his haori. Shippo giggled, unable to resist commenting on Inuyasha's altered shape. "You look like you're going to give birth like Sango!"

"Shut up," Inuyasha barked.

"Sango has a much more refined shape while pregnant," Miroku said, frowning.

"Uncle?" Saya's voice rose out of his haori groggily.

The hanyou loosened his hoari and opened it, letting his niece sit up and gaze out. "Hey kid. You feeling okay? Need to pee?"

Shippo sniggered but fell silent when Inuyasha threw him a deadly glare.

Saya's small nostrils flared and she turned her head to look at Shippo and Miroku at the table, registering their presence and that there was food in the room. She struggled with the red fabric of her uncle's haori, climbing out and making a beeline for the table. Before she could stop and ask to share their food, Shippo passed a few of the rice cakes to her. "Eat up."

Shakily, Saya began stuffing the rice cakes into her mouth, chewing rapidly. Inuyasha eyed her from his corner with his ears flattened.

"How would you like to go and see your father, Saya?" Miroku asked, smiling brightly. Inuyasha recognized it as the grin he offered to his sons when they weren't eager to do something that Miroku had deemed vital like chores or lessons that involved sitting and writing or reciting something rather than notching an arrow in a bow or jabbing at an enemy with a pole.

Saya shook her head, a sharp and violent motion. Her little jaw kept chewing rapidly while her eyes stared ahead at the wall blindly.

"But your father wants to see you!" Shippo tried, using the same brightness that Miroku had.

Saya swallowed the last of her rice cake with a gulp and reached for another, one of only two left. She didn't answer the fox, merely continued eating heartily.

Footsteps thumped over the floorboards out in the hallway. Inuyasha's ears flicked, following the sound. "Saya," he barked. When the girl turned and looked at him, munching on her rice cake, Inuyasha motioned for her to come to him. "Over here."

She obeyed, holding the rest of the rice cake in her mouth and hopping over to her uncle. Miroku watched their interaction with a small frown.

The door opened and a plump middle aged human, a maid, was kneeling on the other side. She smiled confidently and told them, "Lord Shimofuri has asked for all of his guests to meet with him in the audience room. If you would all follow me…?"

They rose to their feet and moved after the maid, leaving the door to the room they had spent the night in open. Saya snatched the last rice cake before leaving and trotted after the adults and Shippo while stuffing it into her face, crunching on the cakes with a snap. Inuyasha kept his ears turned backward, trained on Saya's steady, fast-paced tread.

The maid led them through the residence halls and passageways and down a flight of stairs before they came to the audience room. The room was empty except for maids who were setting up a small tray of tea in the center of the room. Stacks of circular teacups were lined up. Inuyasha counted them in a quick glance and knew that this would not be a simple meeting with Shimofuri. They would not be the only guests.

The maid gestured for them to sit along the right side of the audience room in a diagonal line like half of a V shape of migrating geese. They faced the small raised platform where assumedly Shimofuri would sit as the lord and host, but Inuyasha calculated the spots left to be filled ominously. The entire left side could be filled, and then the space directly in front of the platform and again further back…

His hands were wet with perspiration, ready and expecting trouble from any corner. It was further troubling that Shippo and Miroku appeared completely at ease. The fox playfully transformed into the plump middle-aged maid as soon as she had left them alone in the room and whistled a tune Kagome had taught him while he poured tea for Miroku. "Did you want some Inuyasha? Saya?"

"Yes," Saya responded, eagerly. She was wiping her mouth free of the rice cake crumbs. After eating them so quickly her mouth was sure to be dry.

Shippo, in the maid's guise, flipped over another teacup and started pouring. The herbal smell was fresh and calming but Inuyasha resisted it. "Inuyasha?" Shippo asked.

"No."

"We may be here for a long time," Miroku muttered. "Lord Shimofuri has not been prompt about meeting his guests in my experience. Most lords aren't. Especially to their lowest ranking guests." Shippo scooted toward the monk with his filled teacup and passed it off to him with a wink. His eyes were green while the maid's had been a normal human brown. Miroku frowned at him but took the cup. After he had sipped he went on. "Of course if your brother was here we could expect Lord Shimofuri to arrive in only a minute or two. Any longer and I expect Sesshomaru would lop off his leg or…"

"Not right now," Inuyasha muttered, smirking darkly.

"No, he's better now," Shippo said, still knelt and pouring tea as the maid. "How do I look? Is it a good match?"

"Your eyes are wrong," Miroku murmured.

"What do you mean he's better?" Inuyasha demanded, only becoming further alarmed.

The maid—Shippo—turned and smiled at him in a mockingly maternal way. "He was up and about today! He went and had a bath and he was talking to his wife last I heard. Lady Rin wasn't too happy about that." The fox boy paused and cocked his head to one side. "Are you sure you don't want some tea, Inuyasha?"

"There's no fucking way he could be—"

"Tea!" Saya shouted gleefully as Shippo shuffled over to her with her cup. She took it from Shippo and gulped it, frowning a moment later as she registered the warm temperature. "Bleh."

"It's the way I look isn't it?" Shippo teased the hanyou, provoking him. "I could try another form…"

Inuyasha's ears folded down and he growled. "Don't you—"

Before he could go on Shippo's shape wavered. The gray hair darkened into back and took on a slight curl, the features morphed into something very familiar, a face Inuyasha had been sharing a bed with for many years now. Kagome sat before him, batting her eyes—but she was not completely Kagome as Inuyasha knew her in the present, instead she was younger, slimmer, more girlish and less womanly.

Saya was holding her teacup but had forgotten it and everything else as she stared with a baffled expression. Shippo's shape shifting hadn't bothered her because his scent was familiar, but she whimpered uncertainly now that he was mimicking known faces—as Jishin had when she took on Sesshomaru's appearance and attacked. Inuyasha noted her alarm and growled deeply. "Shippo, I'm going to wring your neck—knock it off you're scaring Saya."

"Sit!" Shippo-Kagome shrieked and Inuyasha cringed.

Miroku coughed, trying to hide his amusement.

A door slid open across the room and the group turned with surprise to see who had come to join them. Inuyasha breathed a sigh of relief when Jaken appeared behind the maid, followed only by his charge Boroya, not by a fully recovered Sesshomaru. The toad regarded the others in the room with a snort and then yelled at the boy to sit where he told him to.

"Jaken!" Saya called, grinning.

The inuyoukai boy was sitting down when Saya spoke and he pointed at her, observing aloud. "She's the girl from last night. The sleepy one."

"Hush, boy!" Jaken shrieked. "Don't speak unless you are spoken to."

"Jaken" Saya called again. She got to her feet, placing the empty teacup aside carelessly, and started to charge across the room to hug the little imp but Inuyasha grabbed her arm and stopped her. "Uncle?"

"Just wait here," he muttered, glaring suspiciously at the toad.

Jaken returned Inuyasha's glare with one of his own. "Worthless half-breed!"

"Jaken?" Saya asked, confused at the strange tenseness, the negative vibes the room suddenly exuded.

"Let her go see him," Miroku said quietly, aiming the words at Inuyasha's flicking ears.

Reluctantly, Inuyasha released Saya and the girl rushed for the toad, pouncing on him like a kitten. The imp grunted and scolded her. "Stupid girl! Sit down and behave properly for once!"

"I missed you!" Saya cried, snuggling into Jaken's greenish clammy and rather bulbous head while he squirmed and fought to push her away.

Shippo giggled mischievously. "I don't know how anyone could miss _that."_

A few minutes later Ginrei entered the room and took the spot closest to the platform. Supported on one hip and shoulder she carried Hanone. Saya recognized her younger sister immediately by both scent and sight. She cried out in a high voice and rushed after Ginrei. When the inuyoukai woman had sat down and placed Hanone in her lap, she allowed Saya to embrace her.

Inuyasha watched the interaction intently, fidgeting with mounting anxiety. Control had always mattered to him so much and now this child that had come into his possession, had weaseled her way into his heart, was being gradually wrenched away. She was leaving his protection and his control. Part of him understood that this was what he had come for, that he had done nothing but act honorably—but in the end it was only causing him pain. He still had Sesshomaru to contend with and despite what he'd said to Shippo and Miroku, Inuyasha knew that his older brother had been deeply disturbed and upset. Just as it bothered the hanyou to see Saya reuniting slowly with members of her immediate family, Sesshomaru would have felt the same seeing Inuyasha's control over her.

If Sesshomaru was well again, Inuyasha couldn't begin to imagine his wrath. And although he had never really been afraid of fighting his brother—he'd done it often enough after all—now he had seen Sesshomaru's daughters. He had loved Saya. If Sesshomaru decided that Inuyasha would have to pay for stealing Saya away with his life…he could only think of how much such a thing would scar Saya. He could see so clearly for the first time their connectedness as _kin_ as two _families. _

He opened his mouth several times; ready to call Saya back, but always silenced himself, gagging his mouth with his own thoughts.

"Lady Ginrei is in the position of honor," Miroku observed, whispering. He was speaking more to Shippo, who had come to sit next to him, closest to the platform but Inuyasha's ear twisted in that direction, overhearing. It gave him hope for a short time that perhaps this was the full extent of Shimofuri's audience—but those hopes were soon dashed.

More footsteps announced more guests just before Rin entered the room. She was dressed in a creamy white with red embroidered peonies. She carried herself with a regal bearing that she had held as a human but as an inuyoukai it approached aloofness that Inuyasha had thought only his brother capable of mastering. Yet all of the washed away when her eyes, a bluish color, fell on Saya. Her shoulders dropped as she was walking and her lips parted slightly. Inuyasha recognized the expression because it was one he had seen Kagome make when she was worried about one of their pups. It was entirely possible that he had made the same expression himself.

Rin's appearance distracted him so much that Inuyasha didn't realize that Sesshomaru was following her immediately until a dark shape drew his attention like a shadow following Rin. Sesshomaru was not wearing his usual white traveling robes, but had donned something dark blue with stripes of yellow splashed throughout. His hair was to his shoulders and it was bright white like fresh snow. The scent he gave off was almost normal. If Inuyasha hadn't been expecting something different he wouldn't have caught the change at all.

They sat in the middle of the room, another honored position.

Saya had spotted them and watched from beside Ginrei. Her golden eyes were wide as they trailed the couple, her mouth ajar.

"Go see your father," Ginrei whispered, nudging Saya.

Saya shook her head without breaking her stare. She got up and ran back to Inuyasha on her nimble, skinny legs. She crawled into his lap, a warm and welcome bundle, shaking with fear. Almost instinctually, Inuyasha touched her hair, stroking her head to calm her. He nearly began the deep throated hum he had used to lull Koinu and Akisame to sleep after a nightmare or a difficult doctor's visit or while Kagome was away—but Rin and Sesshomaru's expressions halted him. Rin was openly watching them, almost hungrily. Her eyes were warm and misty. Sesshomaru was staring straight ahead, purposefully ignoring them both as if he were alone in the room, but his jaw was tightened into a hard square shape.

"Don't let them take me, Uncle," Saya whimpered.

"No one's taking you," Inuyasha muttered, sighing.

Shimofuri arrived at last, accompanied by Tsukiyume. They took their places on the platform and Shimofuri greeted them jovially, smiling tightly but with true pleasure. "Welcome all of you, it has been my honor to house so many fine guests in the Nanka, but now I think some of you must be on your way."

"Do I get to go home?" Boroya asked. Jaken yelled at him and slapped the boy behind the head.

"I'm afraid not," Shimofuri told him, nodding his head in acknowledgement. "But I hope that you will one day think of the Middle Lands as your home."

Boroya made a face, about to tear up. "I want to go home to Mother."

"Hush!" Jaken squawked.

"Because you are eager for answers Boroya," Shimofuri said, "I will begin with you. In a few days your mother will come here to undergo discussions for peace between our clans. Boroya, you are key to these plans. You have a great future and grave responsibilities ahead of you. Do you understand?" Boroya nodded solemnly and Shimofuri went on in a calm, gentle voice. "You are to become my hostage, but I will treat you as if you were my own son. Your mother will visit you once every summer and I will provide for your education. In due time you will inherit the lands that once belonged to my uncle. This is a great honor for you."

When Boroya was silent, staring sullenly at the floor, Jaken swatted him on the shoulder. "You've been complimented by Lord Shimofuri! Answer him!"

"Yes!" Boroya shouted automatically. "Thank you!"

Shimofuri went on a little slower, with less enthusiasm. "I will also negotiate a proper marriage for you. Currently, with Lord Sesshomaru and Lady Ginrei's consent, you will be betrothed to Hanone, their daughter. Again, this is an honor some would say is above and beyond your station considering your mother's treason against my lands. It is your responsibility to act honorably here or these opportunities may be revoked."

"Yes sir," Boroya muttered.

"Good then," Shimofuri said, nodding. "You may take him out of here, Jaken. After that I free you from his service and you may rejoin Lord Sesshomaru as long as that is your wish."

Jaken nearly choked in his eagerness to reply. "Of course! Why wouldn't I—I would never—"

"Good, then go." As soon as Jaken had ushered Boroya out of the room, Shimofuri turned his attention to Ginrei with a warm smile. "Lady Ginrei, I have had the annulment document drawn up and completed."

"Thank you, Lord Shimofuri," Ginrei replied gently.

"You are free to do as you wish, but…" he paused and cleared his throat awkwardly. "As you know I would greatly value your continued company here in the Nanka. You and Hanone of course."

"I would be honored to stay in the Nanka with Lord Shimofuri," Ginrei said, smiling.

"In that case," Shimofuri began lightly, "the castle is yours to roam in. You may leave and go wherever you please."

Ginrei thanked him again formally and bowed. She held Hanone as she left but paused awkwardly as she passed by Sesshomaru and Rin. Hanone had reached out and snatched her father's newly grown white hair. She tugged it but Sesshomaru did not react except to calmly reach up and open her palm, freeing himself. Yet as Ginrei disappeared out the door, Sesshomaru turned his head and followed Hanone. His jaw relaxed and for a split second Inuyasha imagined he saw sadness, perhaps regret or some loss…

But it was fleeting like a robin hopping over open grass, hunting the ever-elusive worms.

"Cousin!" Shimofuri called, startling Inuyasha into blinking and facing the platform with a blank, open stare.

"What?" he grunted.

"It is always a pleasure to see you. You look well. I trust your son is—"

"Leave Koinu outta this. You ain't taking anymore hostages or making any treaties with me."

"I hope I can convince you otherwise," Shimofuri said, openly amused.

"Cut the crap," Inuyasha snapped. "I know why I'm here and it has nothing to do with you and me being distant cousins." He felt Rin and Sesshomaru's stares, as well as Miroku and Shippo, all of them fueling his tension. He let it come spilling out, like water bursting through a crack in a dam. "It isn't my fault that Saya doesn't trust them anymore and what kinda asshole would I be if I just threw her at them, huh? Do you know how traumatized this poor kid is? I'm not gonna make it any worse." He turned toward Sesshomaru and scowled as he jabbed his finger accusingly at his older brother, "And you! You want to fight about this well I'm ready for you but maybe you should stop and think about how this makes Saya feel. Poor kid is already fucking terrified of you!"

"Inuyasha," Miroku said, trying to stop the tirade. "Language…"

Sesshomaru himself raised his voice to protest the hanyou next. "If you were not so impatient, little brother, you would have waited to hear what Shimofuri had to say."

_Dammit,_ Inuyasha thought, _he hasn't been better a whole day and he's already Mr. Cool and in charge again._

Before he could reply, Shimofuri said, "As Lord Sesshomaru and Lady Rin discussed with me a short time ago, they are in agreement that you have performed admirably in protecting their daughter Saya. They wish to reward you."

This news left Inuyasha dumbstruck and silent. Shippo was the one to repeat it in hopes of clarification. "Reward him?"

Shimofuri motioned at Tsukiyume, sitting just behind him rather than directly at his side, and she moved for the small doorway that she had her brother had entered through. When she opened it a human scribe walked through holding several parchments crammed beneath his arms. He trundled awkwardly to kneel in front of the platform. Another servant, a young man, followed behind him with a small table for writing.

"I have had the documents prepared. Now only Inuyasha's approval and the signatures remain to be done."

"Backup," Inuyasha snapped. "Documents?" He looked suspiciously between Shimofuri and Sesshomaru. "I ain't signing anything that—"

"You will have every opportunity to review it," Rin said, speaking for the first time. "It asks nothing from you that you have not already shown yourself willing to do."

The scribe was busily setting up the table, unrolling the parchments, and preparing his brush and ink. In spite of his pathetic, crooked appearance, he was very fast with his hands. He began reading aloud in a wobbly voice that grated on Inuyasha's ears, making the hanyou cringe.

"In acknowledgement of a certain Inuyasha's generosity in caring for Lord Sesshomaru's young daughter Saya, the Lord Sesshomaru will be held in debt to him. The debt concerns familial matters and duty and binds Lord Sesshomaru of the Western Lands to the hanyou Inuyasha and to his closest kin. Therefore, in the event that any of Inuyasha's offspring should be in danger, or should Inuyasha and his wife die and leave their children unprotected, or some other unforeseen events endanger his offspring, Lord Sesshomaru will be honor-bound to protect said offspring. And should Inuyasha or his wife be unable to shelter their offspring at a future time, then Lord Sesshomaru would also be honor-bound to adopt them as his children with all the rights of—"

"Whoa," Inuyasha interrupted, waving his clawed hands as if he were an air traffic coordinator bringing in a plane to an airport. "Whoa, wait—what the hell is this saying?"

Rin and Sesshomaru were watching him, one with a benign and gentle gaze, the other impassionate but also annoyed. "You have protected Saya and saved her life," Rin said. "This is what we are planning to offer in return if you approve of it. If your children were in danger, Lord Sesshomaru and I would take them in and protect them until we could return them to you. We are pledging to offer your children the same protection that you gave to our Saya so selflessly."

Inuyasha's ears were lying flat, his golden eyes narrowed suspiciously. It wasn't Rin that he distrusted—but the dispassionate, seemingly bored Sesshomaru. "No fucking way."

"Inuyasha, language…" Miroku muttered.

"Fuck language! Don't you see what this is, monk? That bastard is planning to steal _my pups_! He's plotting some sort of—"

"The contract is binding and clearly states that your children are your own, Inuyasha." Shimofuri motioned toward the scribe and the parchment. "You are more than welcome to examine it yourself. If there is something you disagree with it can be rewritten and changed to suite your liking." He stopped and smiled patiently. "I assure you that Lady Rin and Lord Sesshomaru are genuinely grateful for your aid with Saya."

"Give me that paper," Inuyasha growled. The scribe moved awkwardly, scooting on his knees and extending his arm to pass on the parchment. The hanyou snatched it away violently and then searched only briefly, eyes flicking over the long, legal script. He scowled and his ears flattened. _I can't read this shit…_ He pushed it toward Miroku. "Read monk, make yourself useful."

The room fell into a strained silence as Miroku read with squinted eyes and a look of intense concentration. Inuyasha peeked over his shoulder occasionally, fidgeting with impatience. At last Miroku lowered the paper and his expression loosened until it was blank, unreadable.

"It's some kind of trap, isn't it?" Inuyasha demanded.

Miroku shook his head. "I'm afraid if it is a trap I am unable to see just how." He cleared his throat nervously. "I believe, if I am reading this correctly, that if you and Kagome died Inuyasha, Lord Sesshomaru would adopt Koinu and Akisame and give them the same privileges as they would give to Saya. Nearly equal inheritance. Koinu and Akisame would inherit sizable plots of the Western Lands to watch over and rule under Lord Sesshomaru…"

Inuyasha scowled and glared at his older brother, dumbfounded and unable to comprehend how such a treaty would benefit Sesshomaru in any way. It lessened the inheritance Saya could take, or even other pups that Sesshomaru could have in the future. It struck Inuyasha as awkward and remarkably unlike the Sesshomaru he had always known. It was unbelievably painful to imagine his Koinu and his Akisame living in the Western Lands under Sesshomaru's fist, but if something killed Inuyasha…

"Let me see!" Shippo took the paper from Miroku and gawked at it, reading rapidly. After a moment he announced, "Lady Rin and Lord Sesshomaru have already signed it! And so has Lord Shimofuri as a witness. There's room for more witnesses too, one from your side Inuyasha. Can I sign it? Please?"

"No," Inuyasha growled. "Miroku's going to do it."

"Then you will accept our proposal?" Rin asked, smiling.

Frowning uncertainly, Inuyasha asked the monk, "Is there anything else I should know about on that thing?"

"It's exactly as Lady Rin said earlier. It asks nothing that you haven't already done. Just as Lord Sesshomaru will protect and adopt your children if something happens to you, you are obliged to do the same." Miroku paused and smirked, looking at Saya who was still in her uncle's lap, dozing off with her small arms wrapped around him. "I think it is fairly clear you are willing to uphold your end of this. The treaty here only puts into words a debt that Lord Sesshomaru now owes you."

"I'll accept it then," Inuyasha murmured in a surprisingly quiet voice. He looked to Sesshomaru, ignoring Rin's openhearted smile and warm face to peer at his brother. It went without saying that this was Rin's work, but Sesshomaru was unlikely to break to her desires unless he could see himself doing whatever it was. He understood debt and honor more than Inuyasha and probably lived with that knowledge as acutely as he could feel the air passing in and out of his nose. Inuyasha cared much less about honor at least, as a hanyou it had been denied to him. Yet he had always felt family above all of those other things. Now he could expect Sesshomaru to behave with family more on his mind than honor or ambition…

"One last thing," he said, turning toward the paper and taking it from the monk and the fox at his side. "I want this to include Kagome. If something happens to me and leaves her _and_ my pups alone…"

"Of course—" Rin started to agree, but Sesshomaru interrupted her.

"No." Everyone in the room turned their eyes toward the Lord of the Western Lands with surprise. Sesshomaru leaned forward and narrowed his eyes at Inuyasha. "This is an agreement regarding _blood._ I am not bound to also protect your mate."

"My wife," Inuyasha snapped, "is as good as _blood._"

"I will not agree to protect her." Sesshomaru lifted his chin arrogantly, a show of power and stubbornness. "I have extended this promise as repayment for your care of Saya," he said. "I have no obligation toward your miko. Should you persist in questioning my honesty and insulting me, I will rescind the offer completely."

At the sound of her name, Saya stirred in Inuyasha's lap and turned her head, blinking out sleepily at the room. "Sister?" she squeaked.

"Fine," Inuyasha snapped, though he was bristling. He caught Rin's hungry gaze lingering on Saya and wrapped an arm around the little girl. The wide expanse of red fabric from his sleeve all but covered Rin's view. "Give me a brush and I'll sign the damned thing—but I'm not going to thank you, asshole. I know this wasn't your idea and you're a bastard for lying and saying it was. This was Rin's idea. Feh…"

Sesshomaru was glaring almost openly as the scribe prepared the brush and brought it to Inuyasha. The hanyou signed it sloppily, using an outdated script and unclear calligraphy that made the scribe blink as he tried to read it back. When Inuyasha caught the scribe lingering too long over his calligraphy, he barked at him gruffly, "You got a problem with that? You know how to read old man?"

Sheepishly the scribe moved to Miroku and let the monk sign as a witness. Miroku's script was free and loose, a work of art beside Inuyasha's. The hanyou scowled down at it.

"Excellent," Shimofuri said when the signing had concluded. "With luck the debt may never need fulfilling, but I am pleased to see your families tied together. There should never be hatred between siblings."

In the short silence that followed Inuyasha managed to fit in a loud and distinctly sarcastic, "Feh."

Shimofuri went on in a slower, more cautious voice, "There is one last thing to ask of you, Inuyasha, before you and your friends are free to leave and return home."

This was the cue for Rin to speak apparently, because she moved and startled Inuyasha, Shippo, and Miroku into turning their heads. Sesshomaru sat unchanged in his position, but he had cocked his head slightly, allowing himself to watch his brother, daughter, the monk and the fox without really seeming to do so. Inuyasha bristled, already aware of exactly what was about to happen. He tried and failed to stop himself from pressing Saya closer to his chest.

"Inuyasha," Rin murmured, direct and open, "you must be able to convince Saya that we are her parents. Please…"

Uncomfortable and suddenly hot, Inuyasha shifted in his spot, moving his legs around and jostling Saya on his lap. "I've tried…" he growled.

"Please," Rin repeated. "Try again."

Reluctantly, Inuyasha pulled his hand back from Saya and started to pick her up, grabbing under her legs. Saya whimpered and held onto him tightly. "Uncle?"

Inuyasha rose to his feet and for a moment the room was frozen, a scene caught in ice. Shimofuri, the silent Tsukiyume, stunned Miroku and Shippo, and the tense Rin and Sesshomaru waited. None of them knew whether Inuyasha was trying to walk out of the room with Saya or if he was going to somehow force Saya to accept her true parents. Perhaps even Inuyasha himself didn't know what he would do in that moment, but the scent of his niece, filled with his brother's unique aroma of power and strength, as well as the maternal longing and pain he saw in Rin's eyes were all indicators of truth and ultimately of his responsibility. He was Uncle, not Father and as a father he knew the terrible anguish that Rin and Sesshomaru must've felt throughout their ordeal.

He took several steps forward until he was standing over where Rin was knelt. Sesshomaru's posture had changed, stiffening more if such a thing was possible. His back was straight and erect and he had even turned his head to stare at his brother. Rin was looking up at the hanyou as well, waiting with her lips parted, her breathing stilled.

Inuyasha knelt down, facing Rin, knee-to-knee. He turned Saya's small body about, forcing her to face Rin and Sesshomaru. The little girl didn't fight his physical manipulation but she clutched at his sleeves desperately and gawked with huge eyes, yawning as wide as they would go. "Uncle…?" her voice had a pleading quality. "Uncle—!"

"Saya," Inuyasha murmured, solemn and stiff, "These are your parents. These are not shape shifters. They won't hurt you."

Saya shook her head frantically. Her golden eyes didn't blink even as they filled with tears. "No, Uncle—don't let me go! Don't let them take me!"

Rin's lips were pinched in a hard, straight line. She was determined not to frighten her daughter, but the desire to snatch Saya into her arms and end the scene was nearly overwhelming. Beside her and slightly behind her, Sesshomaru turned his face away with an abruptness that distracted Inuyasha, setting his heart pounding, anticipating a fight—but none came.

"Saya," Rin cried quietly, "it's me—it's your mother."

"No," Saya said, shaking her head. She tugged on Inuyasha's haori, on his sleeves. "Uncle…"

Sesshomaru had apparently decided to take interest in the scene again and a sudden noise from him, a soft but firm exhalation, drew Saya's attention. The gold of her father's eyes had returned, the color that matched her own. At first his gaze was hard like a predator's but the longer father and daughter stared at each other, the softer Sesshomaru's expression became.

The world had shrunken down into just the four of them. Rin and Inuyasha astonished together at Saya and Sesshomaru. For that time the rest of the room vanished. Saya had ceased caring about the mysterious inuyoukai woman shape shifter claiming to be Rin, and she had even forgotten that her uncle was holding her, a fortress of strength and protection. For his part, Sesshomaru was stripped of his posturing, of his aloofness and cold demeanor. Before Saya he was laid bare, open and vulnerable.

Saya began to shiver. She gripped Inuyasha's haori sleeves, leaving little puncture spots where her claws punched through. "Father?"

Rin moved away slightly, sensing that Sesshomaru had gotten through to Saya in some way that she could no longer could with her changed scent. Her movement broke the moment for Inuyasha and he turned his head, gazing at the rest of the room tensely, uncomfortable at all the ongoing staring.

Sesshomaru parted his lips to speak and then thought better of it. He looked away from his daughter, staring at the walls with their gold leaf and inked decorations.

Saya lurched forward, halfway out of Inuyasha's lap. The hanyou caught her around the waist and then cursed under his breath as he caught control of his overprotective urge. He crossed his arms over his chest and cleared his throat. "That's your father Saya, that's right. Remember him?"

Saya hesitated, then she turned back toward Sesshomaru and shouted, "Why did you hurt me?"

Startled, Sesshomaru gazed at her. Confusion darkened his eyes. "I did no such thing."

"You grabbed my neck!" Saya sobbed, trembling. "I couldn't breathe!"

Rin intervened, "That wasn't your father, Saya. That was an evil shape shifter named Jishin."

"I would never harm you," Sesshomaru told her in a soft tone that bordered on a whisper.

Inuyasha gave a small grunt but he stifled it and disguised it as a cough instead when both Rin and Sesshomaru glared viciously at him. He tried his hand at convincing Saya that she was safe once more to placate the angry parents. "Saya, these really are your parents, Sesshomaru and Rin. The shape shifter didn't smell like them, right? You can trust me, right? Believe me; I know a shape shifter when I see one and these two are really your parents. They won't hurt you—not on purpose anyway."

Saya had started to breathe rapidly, fighting hysteria and shaking with emotion. "Uncle," she whimpered. "You said Father was dead."

"I was wrong," Inuyasha stammered, ears flicking nervously as Rin and Sesshomaru glared all over again. "It was the only reason I could think of why you would be left alone like you were. I was wrong Saya."

"Wrong?" Saya asked, gazing at Sesshomaru. She blinked and tears cascaded down her cheeks. "Daddy?"

Sesshomaru did not correct her overly familiar terminology; instead he motioned slowly, so as not to alarm her, toward Rin. "This is your mother, Saya. She has changed, but she is still your mother."

Saya's attention swung to Rin and stayed there, examining the inuyoukai woman with a wary curiosity. "Momma?"

"Yes," Rin said and then wiped briskly at the tears that oozed out of her eyes. "I've missed you, Saya. I missed you so much…" Rin reached forward gradually to her daughter. Saya stayed still though she was shaking and crying in little whimpers.

The desire to pull Saya back swept over Inuyasha once more and irritably, the hanyou started to withdraw from Saya, shuffling back to rejoin Miroku and Shippo. His ears were drooping.

Saya twisted around to call after him, shivering violently. "Uncle?"

"You're safe with us, Saya," Rin said, gently touching the little girl's soft white hair.

Saya cringed and whimpered but did not flee. "You don't smell right," she whispered.

"I know," Rin murmured. "But it's still me, sweetie."

"Uncle," Saya cried, closing her eyes tight.

Beside Miroku and Shippo, Inuyasha's hands curled into fists and he held his breath to stop himself from growling.

"Saya," Sesshomaru called.

The tiny girl lifted her head and opened her eyes, staring past Rin's hands and arms, ignoring them as she responded to her father. "Daddy?"

"You will stay with us," Sesshomaru ordered, stiffly. "We are your parents."

Blood called to blood. On a night that seemed like it was years ago, the abandoned, feral Saya had snuck into a fishing hut to gorge herself on salty, dried fish, to steal like a starving mongrel from humans. On that night she had first seen her uncle and her cousin and felt the same call. Blood to blood. Her uncle and her cousin's white hair, and the golden eyes she shared with her father and Inuyasha had jolted her out of one existence and into another. Now her father's scent, his white hair and golden eyes like her own, performed the same miracle.

"Daddy!" Saya bolted from her mother's grasp, flinging herself at Sesshomaru. She buried her face into his chest and pulled at his clothing, breathing at his scent deeply. "This one was so lonely! This one has missed you so much!"

Sesshomaru closed his arms around her and almost absently stroked her hair and her back. The softness of his expression disappeared after a short time as the weight of the others' stares hit him. He gave Rin a swift and pointed look, a silent communication of something. She faced Inuyasha, Miroku, and Shippo with a short bow.

"Thank you for caring for Saya," she said.

"Not a problem," Shippo peeped.

"Inuyasha," Shimofuri called, breaking his long silence. His smile was melancholy, showing perhaps a little too much emotion for a proper stony lord. "You and your friends are free to go now."

The hanyou opened his mouth to protest. How could he leave without saying goodbye to Saya…? Shippo was pulling on his sleeve, urging him toward the exit while Inuyasha's brain spun itself in conflicting circles. If he stayed and tried to say a further goodbye to his niece she might never leave his arms again. And yet it was nearly as painful as leaving Koinu or Akisame behind.

"Wait," he growled, but then Miroku came at his other shoulder and tugged him along. Inuyasha struggled, dislodging the monk's hold. "Knock it off, Miroku. I have to—"

"You have to let go of her now, Inuyasha. She is back where she belongs. You've done well."

A strange coldness swept over the hanyou as he let himself be propelled from the room. As he passed through the door he craned his neck around and saw Saya embraced in his brother's arms, sheltered and warm and loved. A hot lump began in his throat. _She won't even remember me…_

But Miroku's words echoed in his brain, hard and unyielding, leaving no room for loss and grief. _She is not your daughter._

He passed into the hallway, leaving Saya behind in the audience room. _Goodbye Saya._

He turned a few seconds too soon. Behind him in the audience room, Saya lifted her head and peered out through her father's arms at the red shadow of her vanishing uncle. She whimpered, "Uncle…?"

Sesshomaru's arm moved, blocking her view. His clawed fingers tickled as they moved through her hair. Saya closed her eyes and leaned into him.

* * *

A/N: Yippee! So this is near the end now. Only like...well I imagine two chapters left including the epilogue. I think.


	39. The Journey Home

A/N: I'm listening to Lost: Season 4 music as I start writing. That Michael G-what's his name composer is very good at reworking old themes and making new ones. Some of this is just so pretty and it all makes great mood music. While I was writing Inuyasha's thwarted goodbye last chapter it was to "Goodbye Traitor" from Season 2 of Lost, which is a mix of these dark tones and then really sad ones.

Sorry I've been away so long again. My life keeps getting in the way of writing. I've started a workout schedule with my fiancé and my writing has mainly been on my original work…leading up to…FINISHING MY 3RD NOVEL. Whoop! Unpublished of course but this one received heavy praise from all of my close, personal readers. Basically my fiancé, who is a tough critic, and my sisters.

Disclaimer: I do not own them

Last Chapter: Shimofuri called an audience with everyone to work everything out. Sess and Ginrei's marriage was annulled and Ginrei could go free, but chose to stay in the Nanka with Shimo. Boroya is a hostage from the north, Yamome's only son. Then Shimofuri acted as a kind of negotiator and go-between for Sess/IY as they arranged a treaty. The results of the treaty can be seen in _Innocence_. Basically Sess owes to IY the same treatment that IY willingly gave Saya. And then Saya halfheartedly left IY with Sess's persuasion…kinda. Inuyasha left sadly, not getting a real chance to say a proper goodbye. He missed Saya's last look at him.

* * *

**The Journey Home**

Saya's life had been altered, forever changed. Whatever girl she might have been before the earthquake had destroyed Jouka and wrenched her from her mother, sister, and Ginrei, she was no more. The new child that Rin and Sesshomaru took back from Inuyasha was traumatized and distant. The Saya they had known would have chattered and asked questions, she would have clung lovingly to both her parents. The new Saya acted independent of them and wary, as if at any moment her suspicions of them would be proven true.

After final deliberations with Shimofuri, during which Sesshomaru set his name to yet another document that pledged goodwill between himself and the Middle Lands by way of Ginrei and Hanone, a small ceremony took place to mark the annulment of Sesshomaru's marriage. It was not long and far from the formal, solemn occasion it should have been. Ginrei did most of the moving and speaking, allowing Sesshomaru to take up a characteristic position of cold, even bored distance.

Rin was absent from the ceremony, occupied elsewhere with Tsukiyume and Saya. They were acting as the babysitters and entertainers for the hostage inuyoukai boy Boroya now that Jaken had been freed to follow Sesshomaru about. Indeed, that was where the little imp was happiest, currently acting as a witness for Sesshomaru's marriage annulment.

At first Tsukiyume and Rin had hoped that Boroya and Saya would play together. The Saya of before the earthquake would have fearlessly approached Boroya and ignored his melancholy or his comments about her odd scent, the mixture of inuyoukai and human that confounded his young nose. The new Saya kept her distance from him with the wariness of a mouse entering an open meadow. It was Boroya who showed an interest in her, asking incessant questions about her to the adults rather than to Saya directly. Saya kept herself occupied by scratching at the wood flooring at the far end of the room. She was trying to remember the characters she had learned with her mother before the earthquake, but it was difficult, like recalling a past life in some forgotten century.

Boroya meanwhile was at the writing table that Rin and Tsukiyume had set up with paper and ink and brushes for the youngsters to write or draw with. Tsukiyume sat with Boroya, but Rin took up a spot at the end of the little writing table closest to the door, a position a teacher might take. She watched over Boroya's work but also obsessively lifted her eyes to stare at Saya's forlorn shape, huddled in the opposite side of the room, scratching at the floor.

"Don't you want to come and practice your calligraphy, Saya?" Rin asked, trying to sound pleasant, unconcerned by her daughter's unusual aloofness. Impatience was broiling within her, itching under her skin. It would take time for Saya to recover, impatience was not the right thing to be feeling, but Rin could not stop it.

The little girl shook her head, rippling her white hair. "No."

"It will be good for you," Tsukiyume encouraged. "Your mother has told me what a fine student you are. Don't you want to show me?"

Saya peered over her shoulder, examining the other hanyou. A long, uneasy moment of silence passed and then Saya turned around, shuffling on her hands and knees. In spite of the awkwardness of her position, Saya managed to do it with ease and grace. When she spoke her words startled both Tsukiyume and Rin. "Where's Uncle?"

Tsukiyume's ears flickered uncertainly. She turned and gazed at Rin, but Rin had eyes only for Saya. "Your uncle went home, Saya. We could go see him sometime if your father agrees to the journey."

Saya was silent though the darkness in her golden eyes made it clear that her mood wasn't improved by Rin's promise of a visit. "I miss Uncle."

"Why do you smell so weird?" Boroya asked, looking first at Tsukiyume, then at Saya.

"Not now," Rin muttered at him, giving way to her impatience with a burst of irritation.

"But Lady Tsuki looks human except for those ears." Boroya scowled with what was clearly disgust. His brush dripped a blob of black ink onto his paper, obscuring several lines of characters. "And that one," he jabbed a clawed finger in Saya's direction; "she looks inuyoukai but smells like Lady Tsuki does. Why won't anyone—?"

"Hush," Rin snapped.

"I'm _hanyou,"_ Saya answered him. Then, in a quieter voice, she repeated, "This one is called a hanyou. Like Uncle Inuyasha."

Rin sensed the history of the last few weeks that she had been away from her daughter, a story she could see the result of but had no way of knowing the full details. What had Inuyasha told Saya? She felt an old nervousness awaken within her, a queasiness about the future. She had restricted Saya's knowledge about humans, demons, and hanyou purposefully, all-too-aware of the trouble it had caused between Inuyasha and Sesshomaru. History had a terrible way of repeating itself and Saya already had one pureblooded inuyoukai sister. In time Rin had no doubt that she would give Sesshomaru the pureblooded heir he longed for, a son to rule the Western Lands. That would give Saya a full brother or sister…

But they would not be full siblings. Not really. Saya would always be stigmatized outside of a loving family. She would almost certainly be useless to the inuyoukai clan in marriage. It was no wonder she had bonded with Inuyasha as much as she had, but it terrified Rin. How long will it be before Hanone looks at her older sister with disgust? And what of the pups Rin would give birth to, the legitimate heirs of the Western Lands? How would they view their bizarre older hanyou sister? How would Saya view _them?_

When Hanone had been born, a mysterious old inuyoukai woman known simply as En had tried to place a sort of curse on the babies. She had been out to exact revenge on Sesshomaru for the slaughter of Ginrei's family, using Hanone. Although Ginrei believed she had stopped En before the spell was completed, Rin held a lingering doubt. What if parts of it had been completed? En had been so old, so mysterious, Rin feared a higher, inescapable Fate at work. She had tried to keep the sisters pleasant with one another and to keep them ignorant of the differences and prevailing hatred of hanyou as mutts, half-breeds.

Had Inuyasha undone that work?

Only time would tell.

* * *

Inuyasha appeared, at least on the surface, to be in a sour mood. He led Miroku and Shippo silently, making a swift pace that ate up the miles. They covered a great deal of ground, almost half the journey, in a single day. Partly that was because the trio did not stop to make camp until well after dark. Inuyasha was not actually in a hurry as it turned out, he'd merely failed to note the changing light until the sun was well below the horizon and the moon rose over in his field of vision, catching his attention at last.

"Time to make camp," he announced, without looking at his companions.

"Yes," Miroku agreed, sighing with fatigue.

"I'll go look for some firewood!" Shippo shouted and then dashed away off the road toward a stand of trees some twenty feet away.

Inuyasha began walking after the kit aimlessly, scuffing at the rocks, grass, and dirt beneath his bare feet. The stars were beginning to peek out from some low lying cloud cover. The air temperature was dropping slightly, causing dew to start collecting on blades of grass. The air felt thick with it. Inuyasha admired the smell while his mind stayed deep inside his "nothing" box. (A/N My boyfriend talks about the nothing box a lot. The box that he goes into where he is not aware of thinking about anything at all. He insists women do not have a nothing box.)

Miroku followed him a short ways and then, when he saw a spot that struck him as a good place for a fire, he stopped and began tugging at his robes. He stripped the outer garment and laid it over the ground as a makeshift seat. He sat on the ground with a grunt and looked at the beads he still wore around his wrist, old reminders of a troubled past, of a curse that had nearly claimed his life and would have extended itself to include Kohimu. His mind turned to Sango and his latest child, another son, waiting for him back near the coast, in Inuyasha's home.

"I heard that old man noise you just made," Inuyasha, suddenly breaking into the monk's reverie.

"What?"

"You made that noise just now. Like an old man." He was smirking a little cruelly, though Miroku had trouble seeing it in the dark.

Miroku stiffened wearily, restraining the desire to sigh. Neither of them had had a father figure for any extended period of time, but Miroku had certainly heard middle aged men, fathers of the girls he was wooing, groan and grunt. Rather than sink into considering that maybe he was getting older, Miroku struck hard at the hanyou. "Inuyasha, I know you're feeling upset about losing Saya but that doesn't mean—"

"I'm fine, monk. Don't go prospecting your emotions onto me."

Miroku blinked, his attack wiped clean as he fought to understand what Inuyasha had said. "I think you meant to say _projecting_ my emotions onto you. But they're not my emotions. It isn't hard to guess how you're feeling, Inuyasha. I will miss little Saya too, but I have six other children to think about, as do you."

"I don't have six kids!" Although Miroku could not see it, Inuyasha's golden eyes had suddenly widened with something akin to terror.

Miroku sighed with frustration. "I meant that you have Koinu and Akisame to think about."

"And that pest Shippo," Inuyasha agreed.

Pawed feet pattered through the grass and dirt, almost like a dog who'd heard his name called and come begging for a treat. "What about me, Inuyasha?"

"Did you get firewood, runt?"

Shippo stood more upright and sure enough he was holding several branches and sticks, some of it trailing bark. "I think this is more than enough to get a few good coals for cooking."

"Then get going," Inuyasha snapped. He paused and peered over his shoulder to where Miroku was sitting, rubbing at his feet. The monk had discarded his sandals and placed all his attention on massaging his soles. "I'm going to go find us a snack," Inuyasha announced.

"Great!" Shippo peeped. "Can I come with you?"

"No—you stay here and start the fire."

"But Miroku can—"

"Let him have a rest, he's an old man with six brats at home."

Miroku frowned but refused to be tempted away from the vital work he was doing with his tired feet.

Before Shippo could protest any further, Inuyasha left him behind, plunging into the trees with every appearance of a dog on a mission and seemingly enjoying every second of it. He ran with his arms tucked at his sides in a position that made him more aerodynamically streamlined, but it was also out of habit because it was the arm position that supported Kagome and other riders that had used him as transportation over the years. When the underbrush, saplings and bushes and ferns, became too dense for his liking, Inuyasha leapt into the trees. He jumped between branches, landing lightly out of a habit that sprang from worrying about a rider.

The physical activity kept his blood pumping and his mind fairly quiet. He concentrated on hearing the birds that he disturbed twittering and flying away. His nose worked the air, seeking out the scent of water and animal scents.

But it wasn't enough. His mind was too large to be completely filled unless he actively tried to close and silence it. Activity worked against him, distracting his ironclad self-will, the control he constantly used over his own deep emotions.

The branches flew at him faster and faster, but they were blurry, hard to see. He stumbled, overleaping one distance. He yelped and snatched at it as gravity—a force he almost always scoffed at while traveling this way—pulled him downward. His claws bit into the tree and the force of his own body weight coming to a complete stop made him growl with discomfort. He hung from the tree branch, swaying like a monkey, with his disheveled white hair puffed out around him and filled with leaves, bits of bark, twigs, and even a few crawling spiders.

He dropped to the ground and landed on all fours, breathing a little harder than usual. Fastidiously, he ran his clawed fingers through his hair, tearing out the debris and isolating the crawling insects and spiders, examining them only briefly before eating or discarding them. His ears twitched atop his head, listening to the forest.

The lack of a rider on his back was as much disturbing as it was freeing. It freed him to behave recklessly, but it also reminded him of what he had lost—or rather, what he had left behind. He hadn't wanted to think of Saya, but there she was. He found himself scraping at the dirt, tearing apart the grass and roots and leaves at his feet in frustration. Would Sesshomaru take care of her properly? What about Rin? How would Saya react to them both? His last image of her, in her parents' arms, was both comforting and disturbing.

Instinctually he thought of Saya as one of his own children now. It was a natural adaptation for him, not only because of his inuyoukai ancestry, but also as a result of his own specific personality and past. Saya was hanyou like he was. In some part of his mind she was also the embodiment of the older brother he had been denied. Inuyasha had never had a full family while young and the effect on his adult psyche was profound. He grasped at it like a starving man might with food. He had adopted the Shard slayers like a stray dog guards a bone, creating a makeshift family so he was never alone.

Inuyasha did not fear normal things like death, pain, illness, or even weakness; instead his ultimate fear was to be alone. It went against every part of his nature to let Saya go.

Sesshomaru, though he was Inuyasha's brother through the great Inutaisho, did not share the same outlook as far as Inuyasha could tell. Sesshomaru had been willing to slaughter Inuyasha many times over, and he had threatened Koinu when the pup was only a few years old. Something in Sesshomaru was different, concerned not with helping his kin, but with advancing only himself and those closest to him. Was Saya one of those? Inuyasha couldn't imagine she was—or that she would stay that way now that Rin could give him _real_ heirs.

Anger raced through him. Inuyasha hopped to his feet and let out a shout, a sound that was a combination of a dog's howl and a human's despairing cry. He slashed viciously with his claws, cutting through the bark and several layers of living tissue inside the nearby tree trunk. Sap spurted and flew almost like water, but when it landed on Inuyasha's feet and his face it was thick and viscous, sticky. Inuyasha swung at it several more times before the tree shuddered and he realized he had nearly cut through it.

Inuyasha blinked and calmed himself. He stared at the scrapes on his hands, bleeding faintly, and at the thick, runny sap. Disgust distracted him from frustration and inner turmoil. He snorted and turned away, following his nose to water.

* * *

It was already hot though the sun had not yet risen to its zenith when Sesshomaru at last left Shimofuri's castle in the Nanka. The young lord of the Middle Lands was not sorry to see them leave, and Sesshomaru was not the least bit saddened by departing. He had dressed in the traveling robes he had originally arrived in, comforted by their comfortable fit. Even the armor covered his frame properly again. He had made a full recovery and regained his old, familiar appearance, with the exception of his hair and teeth. The canines he had lost and the sharp molars further back were growing to fill the gaps that had taken over his human mouth, but they were only hard nodules. It would take a weeks probably for them to come in fully. As for his hair it had returned brilliantly white and straight, but it was short. Each night it gained an inch or more, but it had barely reached his shoulders by the day of his departure.

Rin meanwhile was astonishing without trying. She had no clothes of her own to wear and had been borrowing the unused robes that Shimofuri's deceased mother, Lady Taikokajin, had once worn. Many of them were regal and proud and often in pastels that made Rin seem to shine. She had undergone a transformation that he did not yet understand and it had changed her skin, making it glow. She had a strange hodgepodge of colorations: turquoise on her cheeks, yellow at her wrists, and blue eyes. Her hair, which was at her shoulder blades, had gained a blue-tint that her human hair had lacked. Her coloring suggested multiple lineages from various inuyoukai clans and her scent was similar enough that Sesshomaru could not dismiss the suspicion that whatever had transformed her, it had limits. It had not made something completely new, but had mixed and matched the old to _recreate._

He wasn't certain of how that made him feel, or how it would affect Rin, and later, the heirs she was sure to bear.

Saya was dressed in an old child's robe. She didn't complain aloud about it as they set out, but Sesshomaru had noted the scent of dust from its long stay in storage and knew that Saya was probably irritated by the scent. It was crimson with gold at the sleeves, hem, and collar. It was a very pretty, ornate robe again, probably Taikokajin's as a pup. It was meant for a princess, a girl child of high birth and esteem. Many rulers would have been disgusted to see it worn by a hanyou like Saya.

Sesshomaru led their way, quickly avoiding the castle town. His sense of smell had returned and his brain, unaccustomed to such strong scents during his illness the same way eyes could be blinded by light after a period of darkness, was often overwhelmed just by the pollens on the breeze. The last thing he wanted to endure was a human town with millions of scents competing for his attention.

They crossed under the hot sun through crop fields first and then into the blessed shadow of the forest. Sesshomaru kept track of Rin, Saya, and Jaken's progress behind him by ear. In spite of the heat, Sesshomaru felt invigorated. His body responded with enthusiasm to the activity, craving it after his long illness. The return of his strength, and of both Rin and Saya, put his mind at ease. Even the long ago problem with Ginrei's scent driving him quietly insane was no longer an issue with the marriage annulled.

He would miss Hanone. She was so young that her personality and much of her potential were still hidden, but in the time he had had with her, Sesshomaru had seen potential. He had seen elements of himself. It seemed to illuminate a little of why his mother was so eager to adopt Hanone, even if it was in name only. Shiroihana had a knack for knowing things, however impossible. Perhaps she had foreseen something valuable in Hanone, or more likely she simply wished to keep her grandchildren under her control. Hanone was out of her control with Ginrei and Shimofuri.

It was painful to think of his daughter calling and thinking of Shimofuri—an annoying upstart, a dog begging at the master's table—as her father. But it was out of his hands, and he had never made an effort to claim Hanone, merely left her as an afterthought, a forgotten tool lying in the back of a room. Now he was reaping the results of that lack of interest.

The chances were high at any rate that Hanone would soon be calling a very different inuyoukai woman "mother." Shiroihana was not one to give up something she had set her eyes on.

There were more important things for him to worry about.

The journeyers ended their first night at the border town Sakaime. The next day they would enter the Western Lands, skirting between Shiroihana's province and the mountainous Insen.

Rin tried to get Saya to eat from the rice cakes that Tsukiyume had made for them on the road, but Saya was wary of her mother, distant. Eventually Jaken was able to get through to her where Rin could not. The starving girl shoved all of the cakes into her mouth, though Jaken scolded her, instructing her not only to mind her manners, but to conserve their supply. She didn't listen.

Sesshomaru watched from several feet away, seated and leaning partly against a large tree. The forest was dark and stiflingly hot even though the sun had set more than an hour ago. Sesshomaru would have forbidden them from making a fire to cook, not only because of heat, but to avoid the extra scent and the light that would give away their location. Normally Sesshomaru wouldn't have cared, but he didn't want to risk anything before he was a hundred percent.

Saya's behavior troubled him, but he did nothing. He could see and hear the agony in Rin's voice when their daughter fled from her, maintaining a constant distance of over five feet. Rin had counseled him to be patient, not only with Inuyasha, but with Saya and Shimofuri. Still unsteady from his illness, Sesshomaru agreed with her internally. He could not trust himself to control his emotions.

That night Saya curled up and slept beside Jaken, much to the imp's dismay. When he grumbled, Sesshomaru hushed him. Jaken obeyed and soon he began snoring in a wet, wheezy sound.

It had been a long time since he had not felt the regular urge to sleep. This night Sesshomaru rejoiced that the fatigue was distant, almost at normal levels. Only boredom threatened to pull him into sleep, but he fought it, choosing to watch Rin. They had not spoken much since Saya had come back to them, or since Sesshomaru had formally annulled his marriage to Ginrei. She had seemingly been preoccupied with Saya, but Sesshomaru sensed something else.

"Rin," he murmured. She was sitting across the clearing, unmoving where she sat, barely breathing. Sesshmaru knew she wasn't sleeping because her heartbeat was too fast.

"Lord Sesshomaru?" she replied, quiet and soft. "I thought you would be sleeping."

"No." He let out puffed breath in disgust. She was inuyoukai externally and genetically, but her brain and soul were assuredly still human. Humans thought sleeping was valuable, rather than the waste of time it was. They actually enjoyed their times of unconsciousness as far as Sesshomaru could tell. (A/N: seriously, we spend a third of our lives asleep. WTF? And yet I love sleep, just LOVE it!)

Rin rose to her feet, a silent motion. Human joints might have creaked, popped, or groaned, inuyoukai ones whispered. Her tread was gentle, barely audible. Under the pitch black of the nighttime under the forest canopy, Sesshomaru made out the shine of her eyes and hair, the brightness of her skin. She knelt beside him, bringing her rich scent with her. A childish desire swept through Sesshomaru to grasp her and hug her, seeking comfort, like Saya might.

Instead he asked, "What is troubling you?" The silent addition to this question was _aside from Saya._

For a time she was silent. She was not looking at him directly. She held a strand of her hair and stroked it, twining it around her fingers. "Lord Sesshomaru does not know everything about my transformation."

Her scent was vastly different, and yet also remarkably unchanged. It was enticing, delicious. He parted his lips slightly, only slightly aware of doing it or deciding to do it, and tried to taste her scent. He had done it before, but each day away from his illness his mind and senses were sharpening, steadily returning to their original state. Each time he tried tasting her scent he came up with something new.

"Tell me." His voice came out a little too husky.

Rin lifted her eyes to gaze at him, searching him. "It is a gift—but it will not last forever. I will die human."

It didn't surprise Sesshomaru, but it was disturbing nonetheless. He hadn't known the inuyoukai Rin very long, but the thought of having her return to her human form upset him. There were so many problems with Rin being human, her transformation—although weird and a little mind-blowing—were almost dreamlike, too good to be true. A human Rin would die centuries before he did. A human Rin would age long before he and their pups. A human Rin had nearly died giving birth and had suffered uncountable miscarriages. A human Rin could not give him pureblooded heirs.

But if the transformation came at a steep price…

Sesshomaru's chest constricted. Sweat suddenly prickled under his arms as a new horror entered his mind. What if Rin meant that she would die as a result of this transformation, and soon?

He hid his fear and tried to steady his voice as he asked, "What do you mean?"

"I was told—by Lord Inutaisho's spirit—that over time, a span of many years, that my body will slowly become human again."

There was time, then. Sesshomaru restrained the desire to breath out with relief. He started to lift his hand and reach for Rin but she spoke, stopping him in mid-motion. "There's more."

"What is it?"

Rin drew in a shaky breath. "Every child that I have will shorten the time it takes. I—" she stammered, changing her words midsentence, "—we must choose."

He stared into her face. She could not meet his eyes and was biting her lip. The turquoise streaks on her cheeks were dark against her skin, like twin bruises. The transformation was as much a curse as it was a blessing, Sesshomaru realized. Every pup Rin birthed would shorten her lifespan. Each time she became pregnant, their joy at the prospect of an heir would be marred by the knowledge that they were cutting down the remaining years Rin had. How cruel it would be for Rin, who had seen so many babies lost in blood, water babies buried unnamed in the earth, to have to induce miscarriages—abortions—to save herself.

Sesshomaru brought his hand up and laid it on her shoulder, gripping it firmly. He leaned close to her, taking in her scent and touching his cheek to hers. Rin moved closer to him, cuddling against him in the childlike way he had longed to do himself a few moments ago. There was nothing to say. They would take the curse as well as the blessing and face the challenges when they came.

* * *

Inuyasha and company arrived back from the Middle Lands before dark on their second day of travel. Before they had followed the circling road up to the top of the hill where Inuyasha had built his house and the wall surrounding it Inuyasha was already cringing at the sounds he could hear coming from his home. One of the kids was screaming—actually, two or more were.

When they reached the gate Shippo hopped over it and opened it. Somewhere out of sight, Akisame shouted, "They're home!"

The gate opened wide to admit Inuyasha and Miroku. The monk passed through first, wearily, but determined to hurry inside and see how his family—particularly his wife and the newborn son—were doing. Inuyasha lagged behind slightly, making sure that Shippo closed the gate behind them and silently admiring the trees and the walkway with its stones that led to the house. Kagome had set them up years ago, and planted several decorative trees that were decked out in full summertime green. Those had been long ago days, back before she had been preoccupied with raising Koinu and Akisame.

Six kids came round the side of the house, the youngest first at a gallop, followed by the older children at a more reserved but still eager pace. Leading the way was Akisame, dressed in a boy's leggings and a T shirt that Kagome had brought from her era years ago. The shirt had once been white, but Akisame had covered it with stains, mostly from dirt and grass. The cutesy cat face with a pink bow on the front that read "Hello Kitty" was ridiculous amidst the obvious carnage that Akisame had put it through.

Akisame leaped at Inuyasha but the hanyou evaded her lunge and pivoted to snatch her up with one arm around the waist, lifting her up into the air. Akisame squealed and kicked. "Dad! Put me down!"

Inuyasha smirked at her backsides and her kicking feet, which were bare and filthy with mud. It must have rained recently, though Inuyasha and the others had not seen any rain on their journey back.

They had arrived home during a training session, one of the endless lessons that Miroku and Sango's children did to practice the skills that would bring food onto their tables and keep them alive as adults. Kohimu and Tisoki were the oldest, and while they still had much to learn, they were expert enough to begin teaching some of the more basic lessons to their younger siblings. The two oldest boys, at the edge of manhood, strolled toward their father, heading into the house, with pleasant smiles on their lips and the shine of sweat on their brows.

Kasai and Masuyo didn't immediately go after their father, but chose instead to stay near Koinu, lingering behind the pup as he approached Inuyasha.

"Father, how did it go?" Koinu asked. His white ears were twisting and his blue eyes roving, searching for any sign that Saya had been with them or might be still.

Akisame screeched and intensified her screaming. The sound became shrill and annoying in Inuyasha's sensitive ears so he relented and lifted Akisame into a better position. It was too hot for it, but nonetheless Inuyasha shifted Akisame onto his back. She gripped his haori, pulling on his hair slightly.

"Ew! You're all sweaty, Dad!"

"Feh, no worse than you, Aki."

In spite of her whining, Akisame didn't move from her spot. She peeked over her father's shoulder at Koinu, Kasai, and Masuyo below her like a princess from her lofty position.

"Where's Princess Saya?" Masuyo asked, rushing forward and tugging at Inuyasha's billowing red hakama.

Inuyasha grunted, frowning and wiping at his forehead. His clawed fingers came back smeared thickly with sweat. "She's with her father," he muttered, still staring at the moisture on his hand.

"Oh." Masuyo looked confused, but accepted the explanation easily. He backed away from Inuyasha's feet as the hanyou started to walk toward the house and the shade it promised. Koinu fell in alongside him with Kasai trailing just behind, clearly eavesdropping.

"So Uncle Sesshomaru is—"

"The old bastard is as alive as ever. Turns out the fox that came to us was telling the truth. He was more than sick—he was human." A troubled, complex, and dark expression passed over Inuyasha's face and then cleared into a bland, irritation—a standard look for the hanyou. "He'd even fucking lost his hair. Poor miserable bastard."

Koinu blinked, silenced and startled by his father's news. "But that's impossible…"

Inuyasha snorted and then chuckled as they ascended the short steps to the verandah encircling the house. "You are too young to be saying that sort of thing."

"Does this mean we won't see Saya ever again?" Akisame asked, her high voice piping into her father's swiveling ears.

Shade enveloped them as they stepped into the house. Koinu paused by the door to slide out of some straw sandals. Masuyo and Kasai did the same. Inuyasha slowed slightly to wait for them unconsciously while he mulled over his daughter's question. Long ago Inuyasha had had human cousins, distant relations to his mortal mother. He had grown up with them and hated them, aware that he was different and somehow that deserved their spite and hatred. More than fifty years now separated him from those cousins, but as a young child, after his mother had died and he had fled to live a life alone, Inuyasha had known in his gut he would never see his cousins again and hadn't regretted it one bit. As for his half-brother, that was a different story. He had _hoped_ not to see Sesshomaru, but had always _known_ that he would.

His children's desires to see their own cousin amused and saddened him. He longed to know how Saya was doing too and if they would see her again. His gut whispered that he would, their paths were destined to cross because she was hanyou and because of who her father was. But it was difficult to know what was wishful thinking and what was real premonition.

In the meantime he would be occasionally troubled by unanswerable questions. How was she? Was Sesshomaru treating her right? Was anyone bothering to teach Saya how to defend herself the way Inuyasha and his family would have if they had adopted her?

Miroku's words repeated through his mind again, a never ending torment of truth. _You are not her father._

He reached back and tickled Akisame's side. She squirmed and giggled. Out of the sunlight Inuyasha felt as if she had lost ten pounds. The weight on his back was comforting rather than stifling and her laughter made his own heart lighten.

"We'll see her again, Aki."

Her arms slithered around his neck, sticky and warm but welcome. "Promise?"

"Feh," he grunted. "Maybe if you're a good girl."

"I am a good girl!" she protested at once.

"Then yeah, I promise."

* * *

Endnote: OK I think this was shorter than my usual length. I know I'm like letting you guys down lately. Ugh. I'm sorry, really I am. Starting Grad School for my MA in English Writing in about a week. Eek! Anyway, because this was short and probably not my best work, I wanted to put a little of something that I have been working on. This isn't my third novel, the one I just finished, but it is related. This is from "Yutsuko's Story" (which is my working title right now, not the real title I would give it) a prequel to the novels I was working on. I wanted a more stand-alone project, so I chose this.

This scene comes from the end of chapter 3 of that project (currently it has 7 chapters) where Yutsuko is contemplating her own face in a bathroom mirror aboard a space station called has been remembering her missing mother and the father she never knew. The memory here involves the Chinese story of Mu Lan (Mulan), the warrior woman. Yutsuko's mother told her the story as a prophecy that one day Yutsuko would grow up to be a warrior woman too, but not like Mu Lan was exactly. Kashio mentioned here is her older half-brother. Lin was her mother's name.

**Yutsuko stared into the mirror in front of her, disgusted by her own face. She was very thin, almost gaunt to untrained eyes. The drugged sleep had left gray puffy spots under her eyes. Her black hair was messy, uncombed.**

**_You have another's blood within you,_ Lin had said. Yutsuko reached one finger up and poked at her cheek, then at her nose. She conjured up her mother, trying to overlay the memory image onto the reflection of her own face. She had no pictures of her mother, they had been too poor for that, but she thought she saw Lin in the mirror. Her small chin and high cheekbones, the long but tiny nose.**

**_"We're the same,"_ she said to her reflection, murmuring it quietly in Mandarin.**

**The woman that had been obsessed with the plant turned and asked, "Excuse me?"**

**"Nothing," Yutsuko answered, still staring into her own face.**

**On his farm, his happy plot of land, pampered Kashio and soft-spoken Yonoka were bringing their first daughter into the world. Yutsuko was happy for them, but she felt an undeniable distance too. She wondered if the baby would look like Kashio. Or would she look and act like Yonoka? Either way it seemed that none of them truly resembled Yutsuko. None of them did, though Kashio told her she resembled their father Kobiru often.**

**_A warrior like Mu Lan, but not like Mu Lan. _Mu Lan had been one with her family, Yutsuko was splintered, separate, divided from her father and brother by Lin. _Alone in your heart. _**

_Anyway, __hope that was at least a little worthwhile to prove I have been doing something writing-wise with my time! Eek!!_  


**Prophecies were much better, Yutsuko decided, when they weren't so accurate.**


	40. Return

A/N: I'm honestly not sure how to end this story. I've been rereading it today, enjoying all the biologic goodies I got to write. Ah. I did it after seeing "District 9." And even though that day was a bad one, with my fiancé and I kinda being short and irritable with each other, seeing that movie was worthwhile. SPOILERS ALERT! The main human character undergoes a transformation not unlike the one I had Jishin put Sess through. He loses his fingernails, vomits a lot, and looks thoroughly miserable. Then he starts losing teeth and hair. Yeah!! Sound familiar? Except his was worse b/c he had to change into a prawn. The change between human and inuyoukai isn't as extreme. I mean, at least Sess shares the same outline in one form and has most of the same teeth that humans do. Ugh. Anyway, so that was so cool, seeing an idea I had played out on screen. Go biology! Woot! I explained Sess's transformation a little better though, since "District 9" didn't explain the mechanism for the change. Was it a virus? Was it something else?? Anyway…rambling. END SPOILER.

So back to my problem. Um, how and where do I end this?? I know some of you have also read _Innocence_ (which I am considering not finished yet…btw) and know the future essentially of this story. Because yes, those stories are intertwined. I made sure of it. So _Innocence_ has Shiroihana in it and Saya too eventually. Not to spoil the outcome here but I have to figure out how much of that future to let readers here see. Some of you (readers of _Innocence)_ will already see the connections between Sess family here and Sess's family in the future in _Innocence._ This story answers some questions from _Innocence_ like "Is Sess still married to Ginrei?" "What's the deal with Saya?" and others. I had to hide Rin throughout most of _Innocence_ to hide her transformation. But anyway…now I have to figure out what should be said here and what to leave out b/c it was already in _Innocence._ Hmm…

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the original Inuyasha characters. My own characters, however, are my intellectual property. I make no money from any of them. waaaaaaah!

Last Chapter: Rin wondered whether Saya would ever be the same little girl she was before she was traumatized by Jishin/Koeru and the human villagers. Inuyasha, Miroku, and Shippo headed home but IY was still very much troubled and upset by giving up or "abandoning" Saya. Sess and Ginrei annulled their marriage and then Sess, Rin, Jaken, and Saya all left for the Western Lands. Ginrei and Hanone stayed behind. Saya was distant from her parents, but trusts Jaken. Rin told Sess of the limitations her transformation brings: each pup will detract from her effective lifespan. IY arrived home and met with Koinu and Aki, coming to grips with the fact that Saya is out of his hands and not his daughter—but that he will probably see her again.

* * *

**Return **

After Sesshomaru, Rin, Saya, and Jaken returned to Nejiro castle in the mountains of the Western Lands, life became simple and tame again. The first several days saw Sesshomaru, often through Jaken, setting up the various servants, resources, and other necessities and resources the castle needed. Servants were not difficult to come by because working at the castle guaranteed an excellent place to live and plentiful food to eat.

Although Sesshomaru was seemingly healthy once more, he remained aloof, distant from Rin and Saya. Rin was torn between wondering about him and being consumed by her maternal need to reconnect with Saya. She was unraveling like a ball of string toyed with by a cat each time Saya refused to meet her eye, each time her hanyou daughter recoiled from her touch. The transformation, a gift she had longed for, the answer to helpless prayers, was as much a curse as a blessing. On some level she knew Sesshomaru was still adjusting to it, and Saya was confused at a primal level by her mother's changed scent on top of what had happened to her away from her parents.

It didn't help that Nejiro castle was unfamiliar to Saya. She had been conceived at Jouka, the only hanyou baby that Rin's body did not reject, either out of incompatibility or sabotage from poisoned food or drink. If there had been an earlier child, more mature and adjusted to life, the world, and danger, Saya might have had someone to reassure her that she could trust. A hanyou like herself. Instead those babies had died before their birth, water babies that had all been buried and lost at Nejiro. Returning to Nejiro was saddening for Rin too.

After they had spent three days at Nejiro, a visitor arrived, a face that Rin hadn't seen for some time. It was Daken, the grizzled inuyoukai that had served as Sesshomaru's personal messenger and something of a retainer. He appeared very suddenly before her, informally, startling her while she was out in the courtyard near the stables with Saya and a maid named Hama.

"Lady Rin."

She turned at the gruff voice and found herself staring at an inuyoukai man just shy of her height. She blinked with surprise for a moment. The last time she had seen Daken—she recognized his wrinkled face and the uneven smile—he had been more than six inches taller than her.

She stifled her surprise as he bowed low to her. "Daken," she murmured, informally.

He rose out of the bow with a small grimace. "It is a pleasure to see you, as always. You make a fine bitch."

For a moment Rin stiffened, confused by the terminology, then relaxed as she noted the amusement in Daken's eyes. There was no surprise in seeing her transformed. He had been forewarned somehow.

"You must be looking for Lord Sesshomaru…?" She didn't want to seem too curious, but a cursory glance at Daken's clothing told her that he had not cleaned up recently. He looked as though he'd just arrived at Nejiro. His booted feet were covered with caked on mud and his leggings were thick with accumulated dust.

"Yes," he replied easily, smirking at her. "I'm sorry, I couldn't resist coming to see you first."

Rin schooled her expression, hiding the small amount of unease crawling beneath her skin. "So you knew of my transformation already? You don't seem the least bit surprised."

Daken cocked his head to one side, regarding her with a mixture of amusement and curiosity. "I scented you as a crossed the courtyard and knew the rumor I heard was true."

"There's a rumor?" Rin asked.

"Of course, but I already knew it was true because Lady Shiroihana told me when we fought Lord Kanseninu in the Middle Lands. Before I left the lady to return to Lord Sesshomaru's service I had to see the latest Lady of the Western Lands with my own eyes."

More confusion bubbled inside Rin. "You left 'the lady'? Do you mean—"

"Lady Shiroihana, Lord Sesshomaru's mother," Daken clarified for her.

"I didn't know you knew her." Saya shrieked behind her in a high, keening wail. Rin turned at the waist alertly and relaxed immediately as she saw that Hama had scooped up her little daughter playfully, tickling her.

"Lady Rin—I am older than I appear. I served Lady Shiroihana before Lord Sesshomaru, and Lady Samidare—Lord Sesshomaru's grandmother before that. I am a servant of the Kosetsu province and Lord Sesshomaru is Lady Shiroihana's heir. I serve her and her family." He paused and then offered her a genuine smile, but it was distant, almost as if it was memory that made him smile rather than the present. "You will be the second Lady of the Western Lands that I have served. And technically, should Lady Shiroihana leave or pass away, you will be the Lady of the Kosetsu too. If that were to happen you would be the _third_ Lady of the Kosetsu I have served."

Rin shook her head slightly. "I'm not the Lady of the Western Lands. I'm not married to Lord Sesshomaru."

Now Daken's face returned to the familiar smirk. "Ah," he murmured, "but you will be, soon."

She stood on the grass as the shadows from the decorative cherry and maple trees edged slowly over the ground around her, contemplating what Daken had said long after he had gone on to find Sesshomaru. Sesshomaru had not spoken to her in three days, it seemed to be the very opposite of hopeful as far as fulfilling Daken's prophecy. Rin periodically felt certain she would be married to Sesshomaru, and then unsure and even doubtful.

Hama and Saya were lying on the grass together, staring up into the blue sky, enjoying the afternoon sunlight and the fresh air. Gradually, Rin came out of her reverie and heard Saya's small voice piping, high as a little songbird's. She smiled sadly and started walking slowly toward the couple. Hama had been a maid at Nejiro several years ago and Rin had always liked her. Hama had sniffled and cried with each of Rin's successive miscarriages. She had helped support Rin while they were walking to the shrine on Nejiro's grounds, mourning her miscarried babies. Now she was eagerly helping care for Saya, easing the little girl's fears of the strange, alien castle and her own transformed mother.

The grass was warm and faintly moist beneath Rin's feet. In spite of Daken's reverence toward her—calling her the Lady of the Western Lands—Rin had not dressed or felt very regal that afternoon or really at all since her transformation. She was wearing a light purple robe with a white obi, all of it plain and simple. Saya meanwhile was dressed in a similar simple green and yellow, a deliberate decision made with the knowledge that they would be out on the grass that afternoon. None of them had bothered wearing shoes, not even the only human Hama.

Saya was talking. Rin slowed as she approached, listening to her daughter from fifteen feet away. Her inuyoukai ears picked out every quiet word that Saya said. They were words that Saya meant for Hama, not for Rin. But Hama was acting as Rin's ambassador; this was the only way that Rin could get close to her daughter right now.

"This place is so big," Saya peeped. "I miss Uncle Inuyasha's house. It was really small."

"But isn't this place pretty, Saya?" Hama coaxed. "All the trees and grass, the horses…"

The horse stables were closer to the surrounding walls around Nejiro, near the gates so that they could be saddled and mounted swiftly. Rin had once spent much of her time there, before becoming Sesshomaru's mate. She had often enjoyed riding, relishing the power and freedom it offered her. Women were usually expected to be delicate and demure—horseback riding was the opposite of those things.

Now the scent of the horses was pungent and musty even from as far away as the entrance to the castle, and no matter how Rin tried to turn her thoughts from it, the scent made her think of _meat._ It teased her, stirring some dark, primitive desire for _food._ She longed to ride the horses as she had while human, but she knew they would snort and bellow, rolling their eyes in terror if she approached. Her scent had changed to them. She was a hunter now.

"Yeah," Saya replied, but she sounded unconvinced. After a pause she went on as if Hama hadn't interrupted at all. "Uncle Inuyasha let me sleep in his bed with Koinu and Aki and ah…"

"Your mother would let you sleep in her bed, Saya," Hama told her.

That was another thing that Rin loved about Hama, she knew what was going on and had every intention of helping at every available chance. If they could only convince Saya that she was _safe_, that the danger had passed…

_And if she could let go of her uncle._

Saya was silent.

Rin watched the couple lying together, staring up into the sky. A breeze rolled over the grass, rustling the trees gently. Rin hugged herself, though she wasn't cold. She felt invisible, separate, alone. The desire, the _need_, to take Saya into her arms, to hold her tight, was stronger than she had ever felt. It was an anguish that she could not express with tears. They were clogged up somewhere inside her even as she sought to release them.

_Patience,_ she thought, recalling the old inuyoukai teacher Kuenai's instructions. On the very day that they had arrived at Nejiro, Sesshomaru had sent the old sensei to her, giving instructions that Rin was to be counseled on "what it was to be an inuyoukai." It struck Rin as silly at first, but Kuenai, who had even managed to like her somewhat while she was human, was firm and insistent. She had only received his tutelage on the subject for a few days, but already she understood the importance it had.

She had thought she had been given an education that was nearly identical to Sesshomaru or any other young, royal man. As it turned out, because she was _human_ there were things that had been left out. A young Sesshomaru—a mere pup—would have begun learning lessons on self-control and self-discipline from the moment he was weaned. Most youkai did not go to such lengths to quell or control their urges and emotions, but inuyoukai did because they acted more human than many other youkai. It was a sacrifice and it was very much learned the same way as calligraphy or sword fighting.

Rin's own experience as a human was a start. Even humans were schooled by society to behave properly, but for an inuyoukai there were tricks to curtailing hunger, to purposefully ignoring loud noises or overwhelming scents. Some inuyoukai excelled at self-control, while others failed for one reason or another.

Kuenai had already warned her against reacting to huge emotional surges, or unexpected hunger. If she gave in to the desire to swoop in and snatch Saya up, she might hurt her daughter by failing to control her own strength or further scar Saya's perception of her. Even worse, she could hurt Hama out of some unconscious jealousy. She had struggled with the same emotion when she had first spotted the way Saya and Inuyasha interacted. Kuenai had already known about this particular issue—that Saya was distant from Rin—and he had warned her over and over again to _do nothing._

_Saya will come to me._ She repeated the internal mantra like a prayer. _She remembers me. She will come to me, eventually. _

Rin sat down on the grass and then fell backward, sprawling out carelessly on the grass, pretending that Saya was beside her, rather than a good fifteen feet away. She closed her eyes and concentrated on Saya's voice as the little hanyou began humming and singing. The song was a lullaby that Rin had sung to her, remembered perfectly.

Rin drew in a stilted breath and clenched both fists in the grass, pulling it out of the ground by the roots. _She will come to me._

_

* * *

  
_

There were several reasons why Sesshomaru had not been present for three days. The foremost reason was that he was still recovering his strength. Each day his skin brightened, along with the markings on his forehead and cheeks. He felt the power within him growing, expanding like a dry sponge when the user has added water to it. His hair lengthened each day, and the nubs where his canines and carnassials were coming in emerged proudly as true, white teeth. He could not speak or part his lips very much yet without exposing the stunted canines in his mouth, but by the end of his first week back at Nejiro they would be normal once more.

Other reasons for his absence were mostly straightforward and simple too. He used Jaken as an intermediary to set up the castle running smooth and efficiently. Also he took stock of the news he had missed while away, the casualties his troops had suffered helping the Middle Lands, or reports from the human farmers and warriors that lived under his rule in the Western Lands.

Another time-consuming task was drawing up a fresh series of documents declaring his annulment from Ginrei for his own records, and then setting up a new one to take Rin as his wife at long last. Sesshomaru did not dictate the papers himself, but listened as the scribe and Jaken bickered about it. If something needed to be changed, he spoke up, but otherwise he showed little interest. His mind was elsewhere, considering the future with a mixture of dread and mounting excitement.

What if the first pup she conceived was female? Could they endure the loss? And it didn't help that neither of them knew exactly _how_ each child would work to shorten Rin's time as an inuyoukai. Was it the labor, the pregnancy, or the conception itself? Was it all three? Creating, nourishing, and bringing life into the world was a difficult, draining challenge for every female, no matter the species, but amongst inuyoukai the latter parts of the pregnancy tended to be the hardest. The weight of a heavy pup was only part of it; the major discomfort for a female inuyoukai was that the child drew on her strength, her own power. The stronger the pup was, the more they drew on it. Exactly how this worked for hanyou was unknown, and how it would affect a transformed Rin was yet another unknown.

Now that he had the chance to share most of his life with her, a selfish inclination had stolen over him to hide her away from these risks. He recalled with a sharpened clarity, brought on by his illness and human emotions of the time, the despair that had touched his heart when Ginrei had said Rin was probably dead in the fire at Jouka. And then the warmth and relief and joy that had filled him when she had appeared like a dream over him, crying as she touched the stubble on his human face.

But now more than ever, each time he shared his bed with her, she might conceive. The act between them had become a threat to the longevity of her life. So, closeted away, Sesshomaru struggled to come to terms with his future.

Then, abruptly, Daken arrived. A servant interrupted a meeting that Sesshomaru was conducting with a representative of one of the rice crops, kneeling in a deep bow near the door to the small audience room. Jaken, accustomed lately to acting as Sesshomaru's voice, immediately snapped at the servant. "What is it now?"

The bowing man stayed low apologetically. "Lord Sesshomaru, Daken has arrived."

Jaken spluttered for only a moment before he shouted, "Let him in then!"

Daken breezed in around the servant and grinned at where Sesshomaru sat atop the position of honor on a small raised platform, appearing mostly bored. "Lord Sesshomaru!" he greeted the lord of the west with a flourish of a bow.

"You're interrupting this meeting," Jaken grumbled. "Wait your turn!"

"Of course, toady," Daken muttered, chuckling under his breath.

The farmer, dressed in his best clothes for the meeting with the inuyoukai lord, was shaky and unsteady at the interruption. He looked between Jaken and Sesshomaru, and then cleared his throat and began speaking once more, recounting the difficulties and successes of the projected rice crop that he was responsible for. Jaken listened carefully to him while Sesshomaru remained aloof, seemingly uninterested in the whole room.

"There's been a demon of some sort," the man began with sudden nervousness, "disturbing some of the smallest villages. It has been raiding the fields, not for food but for its own dark humors. These villagers cannot afford to hire a demon slayer and there are no properly trained monks of Shinto priests in the area…" It was unseemly, the farmer thought, to speak of demons making trouble to an inuyoukai, considering that they were one type of demon. His cheeks were flushed red and his eyes downcast.

Jaken scowled. "What kind of—"

Sesshomaru interrupted the imp swiftly, showing that in spite of his impassive exterior, he really was paying close attention. "Tell me the location of these villages."

The farmer blinked and then quietly murmured a few names and indentifying features as Sesshomaru listened, watching the man with his hawkish golden eyes. When he had finished, Sesshomaru said, "I will see that it is dealt with. Go on."

It was nearly an hour before the farmer finished and offered his thanks and then his gratitude to Sesshomaru, then departed with a stiff, nervous walk. Both Sesshomaru and Jaken turned their attention to Daken who had been waiting, unmoving, for the entire time.

Before Jaken could acknowledge the other inuyoukai, Sesshomaru did it, indicating his direct interest in this visitor. "Daken—what has brought you here?"

For all his loyalty to Sesshomaru, Daken had initially been Shiroihana's servant. He had been interested in Sesshomaru for the obvious reason that he was Shiroihana's son, but also because Sesshomaru had dispossessed the dog demon clan, which had also mistreated Daken, treating him as a lowbred mongrel. Sesshomaru may have been born to the highest of aristocrats, but he did not view Daken as worthless by any means. Daken's loyalty to the Kosetsu and the Western Lands was unending, making him very useful indeed.

Now, although Sesshomaru had not seen Daken for awhile, he knew where the other inuyoukai had been. He had almost asked _'How is Mother doing?'_ but the question would have rankled Sesshomaru and probably would have emerged as a growl.

"I've come as a favor to Lady Shiroihana, my lord."

"We knew that," Jaken grumbled. "What does _she _want now?"

Sesshomaru pinned Daken with his hard stare, waiting.

"Well," Daken began and snickered under his breath in a fidgety, tense manner. "The Lady is concerned for you, as am I. She wanted to know that you have regained your health, as you have. She was also anxious to hear about Lady Rin." Daken's speech broke into an informal drawl. "Why haven't you married her? The entire West is waiting."

Jaken made a whimpering noise and looked toward Sesshomaru with panic. The imp was smart enough to know that this was not the type of question he could answer.

Anger and irritation rippled through Sesshomaru at Daken's informality and the inappropriateness he perceived in the question. Especially with the source. His mother was up to something and would be _up to something_ until the day she died. In this case Sesshomaru suspected the desire was simple enough: she wanted pureblooded grand-pups. She wanted an heir to her bloodline. Technically she already had one in Hanone because the Kosetsu was inherited through female heirs. Yet Shiroihana had broken the rulebook when she had refused to bear more pups for the Kosetsu after Sesshomaru's birth and had instead declared _he_ was the heir. It had destroyed the Kosetsu as a separate, sovereign land, and instead made it into a province under the Western Lands, under Inutaisho's rule.

Sesshomaru had often wondered about his mother's motives on that faraway day. Had it been his father's urging to declare his male child the heir apparent to _all_ the land they possessed? Or had it been Shiroihana's choice? He had never known Shiroihana to be swayed by anything or anyone, but something had made her decide that her son, in spite of his wrong gender, was the true heir to everything. He carried her markings, not Inutaisho's, everything right down to her poison and the green whip.

What was she up to?

Sesshomaru stifled his angry reaction though when he spoke his voice remained frigid with danger and warning. "Daken, you will address me properly or I will require your life as penance."

Daken bowed deeply, chuckling under his breath in a wheeze. "My apologies, Lord Sesshomaru. I am merely a messenger from one who has the right to be informal with the great Lord of the West."

"Lady Shiroihana," Jaken supplied, scowling and clicking all six of his claws together. "Lord Sesshomaru is not on good terms with that, that—that…"

"Jaken," Sesshomaru spoke benignly but the imp cringed instantly and began apologizing.

"The Lady is only concerned for her son," Daken replied with a fresh surge of confidence and formality. "She was worried that Lord Sesshomaru has had a slower recovery than she had guessed. She has asked me to seek reassurance from Lord Sesshomaru that he will marry Lady Rin and sire an heir as soon as possible."

He paused and then bowed deeply again. "The Lady also sends her greatest apologies for Lord Sesshomaru's illness and the great pain she caused him in trying to bolster the clan lines."

"Is that what you call what she did," Jaken grumbled.

Daken ignored the imp's verbal jabs. He rose out of his bow and eyed Sesshomaru with a stern expression, a rare thing for the usually awkward Daken. "The Lady has asked me to seek your acceptance of her wedding gifts, which will arrive later today. She hopes that Lord Sesshomaru will forgive her for her transgressions to him, for she feels the greatest sadness at the pain she has caused him."

Suspicion and remorse battled inside Sesshomaru. He didn't trust Shiroihana but did not wish to turn away her gifts or her aide should he need it. As much as Shiroihana was a threat, she was also a valuable ally. And she was powerful. It was possible that if she had been male, Shiroihana would have outdone Inutaisho, rather than marry him.

Jaken peered between Daken and Sesshomaru, tense and waiting. He tapped his clawed hands together, making a ticking sound that annoyed Sesshomaru. After a moment, Sesshomaru glared toward the imp and Jaken whimpered and tucked his hands behind his back, reacting obediently to Sesshomaru's silent order.

Sesshomaru rose to his feet and moved slowly, with the liquid grace of his inuyoukai ancestry, toward where Daken was bowing submissively. He stood over the other inuyoukai and announced his acceptance of Shiroihana's gifts and her apology.

Daken murmured a formal thanks as Sesshomaru turned around and moved back toward the raised platform once more. But before the inuyoukai lord could sit down, Daken cleared his throat and said, "With Lord Sesshomaru's acceptance and forgiveness, I must ask again a reassurance that Lord Sesshomaru will marry Lady Rin swiftly."

"Why the rush?" Jaken asked, not bothering to hide his suspicion.

"Arrangements are being made," Sesshomaru responded, speaking over his shoulder.

"And the Lady wishes to hear about her granddaughter—"

Sesshomaru whipped around to face Daken. "Hanone is with Ginrei. My mother has no right to insist on adopting her."

Daken was smirking amusedly. "Not that daughter, Lord Sesshomaru. The hanyou child, Lady Rin's daughter. The Lady has not seen her before and wishes to know if she possesses the mark of the Kosetsu crescent moon."

A thrill of alarm shot through Sesshomaru's spine. He stiffened but forced his face to show nothing. Saya did have the crescent moon of the Kosetsu on her forehead. Hanone lacked it. But Saya was hanyou, what could Shiroihana possibly want with her? For that matter, why would she care?

The silence had gone on too long between them. Jaken stared at the ground, pretending he didn't know the answer to that question though he had seen Saya everyday for years before the earthquake. The crescent moon of the Kosetsu was almost always the mark of the heir to that particular province, which was why Shiroihana had been able to declare her son the heir in spite of his gender. In reality the marking usually meant the individual was poisonous and nothing more. But Sesshomaru perceived a threat to Saya at once. Not two minutes had passed since he had effectively forgiven her through Daken and already he regretted doing it.

"Why is it any of her concern?" he demanded, revealing the edge of his anger in a hard, darkened tone.

"The Lady is concerned that her granddaughter should be properly trained if she bears such a mark."

"Of course," Jaken muttered sarcastically.

"I have offered my forgiveness and my acceptance of her wedding gifts. But I will not subject myself to her threats. Leave," Sesshomaru growled.

Daken bowed and left swiftly, perhaps one of the wisest choices he had made.

As Sesshomaru moved back onto the platform, thinking deeply on what he'd just heard, Jaken began to ramble and rant behind him. "The nerve of that woman! Lord Sesshomaru, you are unnecessarily patient to the extreme with her! The gall of her, to ask about Saya, _your_ daughter! What could she want with Saya? She's only a hanyou!"

"Indeed," Sesshomaru replied, dispassionately. His mind was working, spinning like a record player or a wheel on a peasant's cart. He would have to tell Rin about it and guard Saya with the expectation that she could be taken from them again.

* * *

In the late evening Rin led Hama and Saya inside to one of the massive bedrooms in the personal quarters of Nejiro. The room she had chosen as her own was more than large enough to house the three of them. The futon was prepared with fresh, clean sheets and blankets as it was every night. A brazier was normally burning to keep the room warm and lit after the sun had set, but now it was kept at a low level because the day had been very warm.

Rin had set up a writing desk with ink, brushes, and paper, and she had a chest where she kept scrolls for leisure reading. She had also acquired several toys that she hoped Saya would enjoy. Cloth dolls, carved figurines, a wooden sword and others. She had Hama and Saya in the room with her and watched over them longingly.

"Let's try practicing your letters, Saya," Hama told her, guiding the hanyou girl over to the writing table where Rin was sitting with the ink, paper, and brushes ready.

Saya obeyed but her golden eyes jumped to where Rin was, watching with a mixture of curiosity and wariness. She sat beside Hama and accepted a brush from her, but she was clearly distracted by Rin's presence.

Rin had been writing a series of haikus, all of them sad. Hama motioned for the page and Rin passed it to her uncertainly. The maid smiled widely as she pressed the page to Saya and asked, "Can you read what your momma has been writing?"

Saya squinted at the calligraphy. Some of the characters would be familiar, but most were wild and new, intriguing her and confounding her at once. Yet the strokes themselves spoke of emotion. The slant of a character, the amount of ink that had been deposited by the writer, all spoke of the emotion put into the poems.

Saya's lips twitched and her chin wrinkled. She shook her head. "This one cannot read it."

"You remember the lessons your momma gave you?" Hama asked. When Saya nodded slowly, Hama went on excitedly, "She's ready to teach you more so you can read and write just like she does."

Saya peered across the short distance of the writing table and into Rin's face. She made a small noise and her tiny nostrils flared. "I miss Momma," she murmured.

Rin swallowed, trying to dissolve the lump in her throat. She nodded and cautiously said, "Momma misses you, too."

Hama was silent, but her smile had changed from the exuberant façade she used to comfort Saya into a melancholy expression. When mother and daughter did not move, Hama suggested, "Saya, why don't you go hug your momma?"

Saya began shaking nervously as she looked between Hama and Rin. Rin felt her heart plummet as the moment dragged on and Saya said nothing and remained motionless. She looked back down at the writing table and closed her eyes, fighting to quell the rush of her emotions. Snatching Saya up as she longed to do would only frighten her and undo all of this progress.

Suddenly the table jerked and the brushes rolled. Rin opened her eyes just in time to see Saya rushing for her. The little girl collided with her, wrapping her arms around her. Rin pulled Saya into her lap and enclosed her in her arms. Without realizing what she was doing, Rin began taking deep breaths, breathing through both nose and mouth until she was dizzy, taking in her child's scent. Saya was shaking and crying, murmuring incoherently.

"You _smell_ different, Momma," Saya cried. "You _look_ different! This one is sorry…"

Rin stroked Saya's hair and her back and heard herself making a strange sound, a deep humming sound, almost a purring. She stifled it, unable to pinpoint what it was or what it meant—but it was something she had not been able to do with human vocal cords. Saya's shaking began to still.

When Saya had calmed enough, Rin guided her hand as it held a brush wetted with ink, drawing the careful strokes of a few new characters. It was lighthearted, not a true lesson, just a tentative activity to do with Saya, to reestablish normalcy. As soon as Saya started to yawn and look distinctly drowsy, Hama suggested that they go to bed.

"Would you like to sleep in your momma's huge bed tonight?" Hama asked.

"Yes," Saya replied, quietly. She hesitated, looking to Hama questioningly before asking, "Are you going to sleep there too?"

"If you want me to and if your momma says it's okay with her."

"Of course it's fine with me," Rin said, smiling. She set the brushes aside and stacked the papers that had dried on top of one another while leaving the wet ink of the other papers separate to avoid smearing them. Saya stayed in her lap comfortably and when Rin had finished, she gingerly lifted Saya in her arms, watching her daughter as she did to be certain the girl did not startle. Instead Saya clutched onto her, wrapping her arms around her mother's neck and leaning into her with newfound trust.

Rin was not tired but sleep remained necessary for Saya and Hama so she led them to the small dressing room down the hall where they donned sleeping robes quickly and then headed back to Rin's chambers.

Just as Rin had slid open the large double doors to her room, Saya gasped. Rin turned her head but some other sense, buried deep in her gut, already knew why Saya had been startled—and by who. Sesshomaru had appeared down the hallway with Jaken trailing behind.

"Daddy!" Saya yelped and then sprang forward out of Hama's grasp.

As Saya ran and bounded down the hall, Jaken scurried ahead to block her with his staff. "Stop girl! Stop!"

"Jaken!" Saya shouted happily. She was about equal in size to Jaken, only slightly taller, and in spite of the staff he waved at her to dissuade her from coming too close, Saya batted it away as easily as she would have dealt with a fly and flung herself at the imp, hugging him. Jaken squawked and struggled, pushing at her until Saya withdrew and faced her father suddenly.

She fell into a bow, her white hair falling around her. "Father! This one has missed you!"

Jaken grumbled behind her while Hama and Rin watched, smiling with warmth and amusement—and for Rin especially, relief.

Sesshomaru stepped forward and knelt in a smooth, fluid motion, scooping Saya up into his arms. Saya embraced him and snuggled into his shoulder and neck, sniffing loudly at his hair and skin. Jaken fell behind them as Sesshomaru walked past. When he reached Rin and Hama and lowered Saya, letting her slide down his silky robes. She clung to his leg after he had released her and Sesshomaru touched her head and said, "Go with the maid."

Saya obeyed wordlessly but her lips were pinched in displeasure. She trotted to Hama, brushing against Rin along the way. "I'll take her inside to go to sleep," Hama said. Rin moved aside from the doorway as Hama ushered the little girl inside and closed the door behind her, leaving Rin and Sesshomaru and Jaken standing together in the darkened hall.

Rin's keen ears picked out the sound of Saya and Hama lifting the covers on the futon, sliding beneath them. She heard Saya whimpering and asking about both her mother and father and then Hama's answering reassurances.

"You have made progress," Sesshomaru observed aloud, startling her back into staring up at him, switching between her concerns as mother to her troubled child and lover to her distant lord of the west.

She nodded. "Yes." Then, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she risked jabbing at him a little. "Lord Sesshomaru has unfortunate timing."

Sesshomaru's jaw squared momentarily, but otherwise he ignored her comment. "There have been many pressing matters to attend." He didn't apologize for his distance, though she knew he would already know how much anxiety it had caused her with both of the most important beings in her life playing hard-to-get. It was difficult to remain cold with him when just the sight of his face—and his scent now too—set her aching with desire.

She took a step closer to him, almost involuntarily. "What has brought Lord Sesshomaru to see me tonight?"

Though she wasn't sure how she knew it, Rin realized he was distracted. His amber eyes moved over her body and the lower half of his face relaxed. He was silent longer than he should have been.

Jaken spoke up answering her question and reminding the couple that he was standing beside them. "That mongrel Daken came and asked Lord Sesshomaru to forgive that evil Shiroihana. And then he asked about Saya's markings! The nerve of her—ah, or him too."

"What about her markings?" Rin asked, alarmed.

"The crescent moon of the Kosetsu province," Jaken explained.

"What does it mean…?"

Jaken opened his pointy beaked mouth to reply but Sesshomaru pushed the imp backward with one foot, reclaiming Rin's attention. "It means nothing. We must watch over her carefully, Rin."

She nodded, agreeing without hesitation. "I'll make sure she isn't ever alone."

Sesshomaru lowered his head in acknowledgement, a half-nod to her, but his eyes did not leave Rin's face. Rin, unaccustomed to searching and analyzing the smells of those around her, noticed that his scent had grown and changed from several days ago. There was a pungent twang within it that tickled her and sped up her heart. Her thoughts had blurred, disrupted by the power his masculinity was suddenly exuding over her. The urge to touch him rushed through her and her palms started to sweat.

"Walk with me," Sesshomaru demanded abruptly. It was not a question or a suggestion, but a command, issued in a rough, husky voice.

For a moment she felt the need to say _no,_ to deny him. Something was rising within her, foreign and wild and dark. She blinked, startled by it. "Of course, Lord Sesshomaru."

They began walking at a steady but leisurely pace side by side down the hall. Jaken trundled after them, huffing loudly and complaining to himself, already aware that they had forgotten about his presence, but clueless as to what to do without Sesshomaru's instruction.

There was silence for a long time. Rin and Sesshomaru's hands brushed against one another as they walked, the rustle of their robes filled the hallway as background noise to their steady footfalls. To Jaken's view they were ying and yang, one with black hair, the other with white, one in a somber blue-gray sleeping robe, and the other regal in white. He recalled Daken's other messages from Shiroihana and wondered for himself why his master had not already married Rin. Was it not the most pressing thing for his lord? He had thought it would take place in the Middle Lands immediately after Sesshomaru had made his annulment to Ginrei official.

They crossed through an open-air inner courtyard of the Nejiro castle. A humid breeze swept through, riffling the hair of both. They passed the bathhouse there and it was empty and dark, but still smelled wonderfully of perfumes and soaps.

At last they came to a small garden beyond the bathhouse that was open to the stars in the night sky but encircled by a heavy partition wall screen covered with colorful paintings of the seasons, hills, mountains, and rivers. The doors stood open, inviting visitors. Sesshomaru led the way through the door and then waited just beyond as Rin followed. When Jaken hesitated outside, Sesshomaru made a slight grunting noise and ordered, "Leave us."

At last certain that he was not needed, Jaken bowed and scurried away as swiftly as his little imp legs would carry him. He did not look back as Sesshomaru closed the door.

A tiny pavilion stood at one end of the little garden, overlooking several small bonsai trees and bushes, as well as a trail of moss-covered stones that marked the path. Rin had taken a seat under the pavilion and waited, watching as Sesshomaru began to approach her. His movements had grown faster and stiffer with tension. He wasted no more time in saying what he had come to say.

"I have finished the documents to legalize a marriage between us." He was halfway between the pavilion and the door, moving steadily and staring her down with an unblinking, intense gaze. "But I want to come to an agreement with you."

Rin's brow creased with confusion. "About what?"

He halted, stiff and somber, about five feet away from her and the pavilion. "The number of children we have."

Rin lowered her eyes and stared down at her hands, clasped together in her lap, gripping one another tightly. "Lord Sesshomaru wants only one child—a son and no others."

His response was immediate: "There is no need for others. I will not endanger you."

"But they are my babies," Rin whispered, noting the way her fingers ended in claws, each one smooth, sharp, and perfect. "Should it not be my choice?"

Sesshomaru came forward another two steps. "I will not lose you," he growled.

As a human, Rin would have felt anguish or sadness, even despair. Now, after the transformation, she felt those emotions, but anger rose foremost. Anger that he would try to control her body in such a way when she had suffered so long trying just to carry one of his hanyou pups to term. The rash desire to lunge at him, to physically attack him, came and went and then came again.

She shook her head and clenched her jaw. "Lord Sesshomaru cannot expect me to love him but reject his offspring." _They are my babies, my pups too._ Sesshomaru was accustomed to control and power over everything that belonged to him, including the children he claimed and legitimized. Apparently that extended down to their very lives before they had even seen or felt the sunlight. Before they had drawn breath or used their tiny, innocent voices.

Sesshomaru's eyes narrowed, his shoulders changed position, squaring. "I will not lose you," he repeated. The words had further deteriorated into a growl. "Not again."

In spite of his emotion, Rin detected a threat, as yet unsaid. She drew in a sharp breath and asked, "Is this to be a condition of the marriage, then?"

Sesshomaru was silent, but his hands curled into fists at his side. The moonlight was streaming in from the sky above, coloring Sesshomaru's hair a ghostly gray and silver while Rin stayed in shadow under the pavilion roof.

_He has no control over this. What he cannot predict and control he fears. _

Rin knew she would not bear every child she conceived, it would be foolhardy to do so, but she bristled at the thought of being limited to one son. What if that son was weak? What if something happened to him? And what would Saya think if she had no sister? It was unlikely she would see Hanone very often. Rin prayed that the first child they conceived was actually another girl, a sister for Saya to nurture and love.

If it was the heir that Sesshomaru wanted so desperately…

Saya would see him as a threat surely, competition, especially for her father's attention. The memory of the little hanyou girl flinging herself at Sesshomaru was still vivid in her mind. What would Saya do when she was estranged from her parents by a younger brother?

Could she get Sesshomaru to understand these concerns?

"Has Lord Sesshomaru considered the effect that his heirs will have on his hanyou daughter?"

Sesshomaru was silent, but Rin saw the way his face creased momentarily and read darkening of his mood. Finally he said, "Saya will obey us and embrace her pureblooded brother."

"Can Lord Sesshomaru really be so certain?" Rin demanded. "Considering Lord Sesshomaru's own younger brother."

"Inuyasha is a bastard, a stain to my lineage," Sesshomaru protested, stubbornly.

"What if our son feels that way about Saya?"

"We will protect her," Sesshomaru insisted. "They will be raised together, peacefully." He paused and leveled Rin with a meaningful look. "There is a great age difference between myself and Inuyasha. At the time of his birth I was already mature. Our son will be more vulnerable than Saya for many years."

Rin dismissed his words internally, finding them too disturbing to consider seriously. Although Sesshomaru had not said it aloud, he had basically spelled out an argument using Saya that backed his own desire to limit the number of children they had. Inuyasha and Sesshomaru had been born in the opposite order with the mature inuyoukai heir being mature and a huge threat to his younger hanyou sibling. Yet it took fifty years or more for an inuyoukai pup to become physically equal to a hanyou. Meanwhile, Saya was growing at a rate comparable to a human, except many times stronger.

The heir of the Western Lands would be a tiny, helpless brute for many long years while Saya was old enough to hurt him in any number of ways. To kill him if she felt so inclined. Rin could not imagine Saya doing such a thing, but she had also not imagined that her daughter was capable of fearing her, of distrusting her. Her transformation had set up a wall between them that could not be easily torn down.

Uneasily, Rin wrapped her arms around herself and drew in a long, uneven breath. "Two children. Would Lord Sesshomaru agree to this one's request?"

He was hesitant, but finally he nodded, a curt motion with his head. "Let us put this concern away from us."

Rin bowed deeply, though her heart remained troubled. "Lord Sesshomaru."

* * *

A/N: I know I totally owe you guys HUGE making out. Lemons, citrus, nummy nummy. This chapterwas just too huge all by itself without it that I had to cut it off here before I got to the nummy-nummy sexual goodness. I apologize for my extended absences!! School and life and other writing have gotten in the way. So...next chapter some nummy-nummy citrus goodness...tho frankly I am not very good with them! I'll give it a shot because you guys have been waiting, and waiting, and waiting. (Sorry!!)

But I want to ask. I'm coming up on the end. In fact, if I wanted to do it, I could have the next chapter be a lengthy epilogue and bam! That's the end of _Return._ That epilogue would be basiclaly the marriage, some citrusy goodness, maybe a bit of something with Saya, possibly a brief update on Shimo/Ginrei/Hanone, probably nothing on IY, he's pretty wrapped up. Anyway, and that could be it. Other wise though, I could have that be the next chapter and thne follow that with a different epilogue that would expose the future a bit more. Some of you have already met the next Lord of the Western Lands as a toddler in _Innocence_, but I could give out a little more of him. So...what do you guys want? Which option? Just wedding/citrus goodness epilogue, or one more chapter and then have the epilogue be set further out in the future so you can meet the heir to the Western Lands?


	41. Peace of Mind

A/N: I think that the majority of those writing in to me were of the opinion: "Do what feels right to you, Shilyn. You're the writer." I have to say that trust is an honor to me. As I've said before, I have heard many popular writers complain about their reviewers being rabid or fanatic. I've had almost no one flame me or the stories. Then again, maybe I'm not as popular and haven't had the amount of massive volume that someone like Sueric or something has. But still, I have to **thank all of you** who wrote in and trusted that whatever I chose would be all right. I certainly wouldn't have spent like 5 years or so now writing these stories if I didn't have such awesome readers and reviewers!

As to the ending: I think the majority wanted to have the extra citrus and then a chance to meet the little prince of the Western Lands. Though honestly, I began writing when I was younger interested in romance and sex and the like, but over time I've developed more into being interested in family dynamics. Citrus is hard for me! I hope I've done it well enough here! Probably my lack of confidence in writing citrus/sex/lemons (whatever you want to call it) means I need more practice at it! Eek! Ended up being a little more graphic-ish than my usual!

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or its characters and copyright infringement I think involves me getting money from it too, which is most certainly am NOT doing. Please don't arrest me, I have no money.

Last Chapter: Daken came and visited Nejiro. He flattered Rin and irritated Sess and delivered a message from Shiroihana, asking for Sess's forgiveness. Once it was given, Daken asked, for Shiroihana again, about Saya having the crescent moon of the Kosetsu on her forehead. Sess sent him packing in anger and suspicion and warned Rin that they have to look out for Saya now. Rin and Saya began to reconnect with a little help from the human maid Hama. And last but not least, Sess approached Rin asking that they enter their marriage with a plan to NOT have a bunch of kids. In fact he wanted only 1 son. Rin disagreed but they came to agree on 2 pups.

Leaving off, exactly where we were when last chapter ended…

* * *

**Peace of Mind**

A tiny sound alerted Rin a microsecond before she sat up that Sesshomaru had turned his back on her. She sat up from her bow and saw the broadness of his shoulders, unarmored, and heard the swish of his feet and robes. He was moving for the closed door, ready to leave her. Irritation rippled through her. She did not want him to leave and could not understand his distance.

"Lord Sesshomaru has no desire to stay with his wife?" Rin relished the word _wife_ as it passed her lips and smiled as excitement fluttered within her. In spite of their somber discussion regarding their as yet unborn children—Sesshomaru's true, pureblooded heirs—Rin was ecstatic as the fullness of her future with Sesshomaru began to form for her. She had been honored that he had taken her as a mate, into his heart though he was stubborn about admitting it, while she was merely human. Yet there were things she could never have while her body was mortal.

Now she recalled again Daken's remark: _"I had to see the latest Lady of the Western Lands…"_

Sesshomaru had said the documents were drawn up, set into the record. That meant she was technically his wife already.

Without turning to face her, Sesshomaru replied stiffly, "You are not yet my wife."

Rin frowned; at once filled with brash violence, the desire to lunge at him, tackle him. She controlled it with an effort, startled at her own reaction. Her voice was strangled when she spoke. "You said the documents were—"

"There has been no ceremony, no witnesses," Sesshomaru murmured. He had turned to stare at her, his golden eyes alight and narrowed.

With a start, Rin realized that she had spoken informally, even curtly. Normally she was suave with him, a consequence that had come about after long years with him as a child struggling not to insult him, always to please. As an adult and as his mate, she had used it to manipulate him and endear herself to him time and time again. She had only dropped it when extreme emotion overwhelmed her, or when he had wronged her so deeply by keeping his marriage to Ginrei secret while she suffered uncountable miscarriages.

Warring mindsets competed within Rin's brain. Should she bow and apologize, ingratiating herself to him and manipulate him into staying? Or should she give into the maddening instinct to force him to stay? She recognized the separate thoughts, one as being a wild and distinctly inuyoukai need, the other a more natural behavior. She did not have the endless self-control that Sesshomaru had learned over the years. Her new inuyoukai nature was continually surprising her.

Rin forced herself to focus on what Sesshomaru had said a few moments ago, clearing her throat to control her voice. "Why should that stop you?" She rose to her feet and stepped off the platform of the pavilion, leaving it behind. "It's only a formality."

Sesshomaru hesitated, staring at her. The narrow amber slits of his eyes widened slightly as his face slackened. He was uncertain, torn—tempted.

His self-control stood before Rin like a wall, stubborn and immovable and infuriating. How dare he try to limit the pups they had together! How dare he leave her waiting in limbo, unsure of whether or not he would accept and marry her? He had forced her to wait as a human too though their desire had nearly driven them both mad.

The impulse to strike him made Rin quiver.

"The ceremony will take place in a matter of days." Sesshomaru had reached the door and opened it soundlessly with no effort at all. "You must rejoin Saya," he reminded her, using a tone that made Rin think of Kuenai, of a teacher instructing a foolish pupil.

She stood stiff, anger making her spine into steel. Sesshomaru passed through the open doorway and into the garden. His footsteps were soft and quiet, ghostly as he crossed through the moonlit space. Rin listened until her mate's footsteps had receded into the closed walls of the castle, until they were blurred by the narrow passageways. Although her mind was fuddled with a raw, carnal desire, Rin stayed where she was, inwardly repeating her daughter's name. _Saya._ She envisioned her daughter sleeping snuggled into Hama's arms and her desire vanished, drying like water under the glare of a Saharan sun.

Growling, Rin strode out of the enclosed section of the garden and headed for her bed chambers where Hama and Saya would surely be sleeping already.

* * *

The scent of Rin's lust stayed with Sesshomaru long after he had left her. He circled about the castle after their confrontation, searching himself in a way he had not done since he had realized years ago, while Rin was only a teen, that his fondness of her had changed. While she had been a girl, following after him loyally like Jaken, he had wondered from time to time why he tolerated her presence. What was his purpose? He had even tried to ignore her or dismiss her, but Rin chose to follow him and Sesshomaru always found that it pleased him. He had her educated as if she were a daughter, but when he had seen her grown, something inexplicable had happened that he still didn't understand.

His mother had mocked him when she had first met Rin as a child, trundling behind him with the demon-slayer Kohaku at the time, remarking at how like his father he had become. Shiroihana never mentioned it again, but whenever she looked at him in the years since he had taken the adult Rin as his mate, Sesshomaru could feel her silent laughter. _How alike you have become to your father, Sesshomaru._

Yet the great Lord of the Western Lands felt as powerless about the decision as he had been when he had watched his marvelous father betray his mother for a human woman. Family history had such an interesting way of twisting around and nipping at the next generation when they least expected it. Sesshomaru had been both helpful and detrimental to Inutaisho's affair with the human Izayoi. Now he had repeated the same act after a fashion, taking a human mate and then betraying her with an inuyoukai woman.

It seemed even the Lord of the Western Lands—perhaps _especially_ the Lord of the Western Lands—was unable to escape or outwit the hands of Fate. He had always been destined to fail at stopping Inutaisho's affair, and then to actually _help_ ensure that Inutaisho found and saved her—and with her, Inuyasha.

Then, in his own turn, Sesshomaru had been meant to save a human girl, raise her, and take her as his mate, then as his wife. And his betrayal and the annulled marriage to Ginrei that had produced his first pureblooded child—the daughter that he would likely not see again for many years, Hanone—had also been Fated. And yet, what would Fate be planning for him in the future? His unborn children and his daughters, already growing so swiftly, what would become of them?

The dark tone that had ended his conversation with Rin over their as yet unborn pups stayed with him, as if it was more than words, but prophecy. He regretted speaking his thoughts aloud, as if giving them voice—a thing he rarely granted to his thoughts, being a creature of few words—had in fact brought them into life. As if he had spoken a spell.

His tour of the castle was unguided, but it wasn't long before he found himself standing beside the closed door to Rin's bedroom. His eyes drifted shut and he listened to the three sets of breathing that floated to him from within the room. The uncertainty of their future, of Fate, made Sesshomaru long momentarily for human prayers, for the comfort that he had seen Rin derive from bowing before an alter, humbling herself to powers greater than anything in the physical realm.

But for the Lord of the Western Lands there was no respite. There was only raw power, only a future that his claws could carve out.

And yet the time, however short, that he had spent as a human had left something else inside of him. The helplessness, the despair at believing Rin was dead, and _there was nothing he could do to change it._ Now he wondered about the future and felt that same niggling thing, powerlessness.

So it was that while Rin had trembled in the garden, under the beautiful glow of moonlight, and Sesshomaru had felt an answering call of yearning, but it was tinged with something more, a tenderness that almost alarmed him. If she had sprung at him in the garden, enraged by what she had misinterpreted as his self-control, Sesshomaru would have met her with bewildering, gentle passion, not the violence she craved instinctually. He would have evaded or embraced her, rather than rut her, taste her blood like an animal, test the sharpness of his newly cut canines on her smooth, porcelain skin.

The human Rin had been tender but eager. Sesshomaru had enjoyed their coupling both for the sexual pleasure and the power it filled him with in the past, but also it had been a constant challenge that he relished. Each time he was with her he had to conquer his violence. Inuyoukai couplings almost always involved some blood or violence, but while Rin was not inuyoukai, Sesshomaru had had to control himself, and that quest for control, ironically, had brought him some of his greatest satisfaction.

Now Rin had shed her fragility. Her instinct was that of a female inuyoukai, eager to join physically with him. Sesshomaru longed for it as well, but something within him had changed. The freedom he could have with her, to relieve his own need for violence, was not as powerful as the overwhelming desire to hold her, to simply know she was with him. To enter a oneness with her that he had never felt before. It was foreign to him, disturbing and thrilling at once. The only time he had felt similarly was as a tiny pup, in his deepest, dimmest memories when he had suckled at his mother's breast, when the rest of the world was a wide and cold place. Before any sense of adventure had awoken within, before his life had become about power and violence.

Was that truly a human emotion then, or was it something more universal? Why had he not felt it until now?

Troubled, confused, Sesshomaru passed Rin's bed chambers, leaving the three of them to sleep on in peace.

* * *

The next morning Sesshomaru called Jaken swiftly and began laying out orders, preparing for the ceremony that would at last bind Rin to him as his wife, the intended mother of his heirs, and the true Lady of the Western Lands. Jaken was pleased by the tasks and chattered happily as he left Sesshomaru to carry out his orders.

Before the cheery imp had passed out of earshot, Sesshomaru half-heard himself call out to his toady little retainer. "And Jaken…"

Jaken swiveled his head around on his shoulders almost to the point that it had circled 180 degrees to face the opposite direction. "Yes, Lord Sesshomaru?"

"I will not be here if you should return with questions."

Jaken paused, his rounded brow with its gray-green skin wrinkling. "My lord! May I ask where you are going? Are you leaving Nejiro?"

Sesshomaru paused, already standing upright from the sitting position he had adopted while laying out plans with Jaken a few minutes previously. If he ignored his retainer and left without telling him where he was going, Jaken would be unable to solve a problem, unable to consult him about it. The ceremony could be delayed. And yet the thought of intrusion…

"I will be with Rin."

"Oh!" Jaken squawked, at once embarrassed and apologetic. He whirled around and flung his knobby little body onto the tatami flooring. "I will see to all of the arrangements, my lord!"

There was one last thing to consider. "Jaken," Sesshomaru said, his voice smooth and deep. "Please see to it that the maid Hama and Saya are well-entertained and cared for."

"Of course, Lord Sesshomaru!"

When Jaken looked up again, timidly, Sesshomaru had vanished, disappearing as unnoticeably as pollen flying on the wind.

* * *

After morning lessons where she helped Saya, with Hama, continue the ongoing process of learning to read and write new characters, Rin retired to a different room where she expected Kuenai to join her with an entirely different set of lessons. Hama and Saya had left to eat together and enjoy the warmth and pleasantness of the outdoors. Rin's thoughts lingered on the prospect of joining them as she entered the small, plain room where Kuenai had been giving her lessons on self-control and inner discipline of the inuyoukai instincts and urges.

Unlike the lessons with Saya, the room had no writing table, no paper, ink, brushes, or anything else. Kuenai brought books and scrolls with him that he used as aides, but rarely opened them or ordered her to actually read them. Without the writing table the room was bare and smelled musty because it was indoors and in need of a change in matting. At some point in some distant past, Rin knew sake had been spilled onto the matting. The faint scent of old alcohol teased her nose.

While she waited on her teacher, Rin left the doors standing open. There were two of them, double sets of sliding doors that opened onto parallel hallways. Neither hallway had a window because this room was deep in the interior of Nejiro castle and the austere atmosphere was likely deliberate to avoid distracting young pups and even human children with the chance to stare out a window and dream of running through grass underneath the sun.

When Kuenai arrived, carrying three scrolls of differing sizes, his worn, wrinkled face reassembled into a smile. His canines glinted, still sharp and mostly white in spite of his vast age. He closed the door he had come through behind him as Rin bowed and murmured a traditional greeting of pupil to teacher.

"Lady Rin," Kuenai called to her, clearing his throat. His voice was thick and gravelly no matter how often he tried to clear it. "Please, if I may, could you close the other doors?"

"The room is musty," Rin objected.

Kuenai frowned lightly as he crossed the small room in only a few strides and knelt three feet from her, his knees facing hers. He grunted with the effort and Rin, shrugging her shoulders and twiddling her thumbs in her lap, wondered how much of his behavior was feigned and how much was real. As a teacher Kuenai valued extreme age, and she knew he acted physically much more decrepit than he was. Not long ago he had suspected Tsukiyume, when Shimofuri's younger hanyou sister had been in Sesshomaru's care, of espionage and had chased her down and through the hallways. He might have torn her apart with his claws if Rin hadn't stopped him.

"If you are comfortable discussing this with the door open so that the humans may hear us, that is fine, I supposed." His tone and his expression suggested that he was being untruthful.

Alarm made Rin sit more upright. "What are we talking about today, Master Kuenai?"

"The usual of course, my lady. But I wanted to change the outline of our lessons. I must ask how you have been. With young Saya, and with Lord Sesshomaru."

"I've been fine," Rin responded.

Kuenai set the scrolls down between them and sighed, long, slow, and heavy. "Lady Rin, when I ask such a question, I am seeking depth. Has Saya come to trust you again? How have you felt about any difficulties you've had in the last several days and since coming to Nejiro. I must address them because, regrettably, Lady Rin does not have the experience of growing up inuyoukai. She will not be able to control powerful, sometimes destructive urges."

"I would never hurt Saya—or Hama," Rin said, firmly. "I have felt many strong instincts since returning to Nejiro, and a great deal of emotion, but I have taken your counsel to heart, Master Kuenai." She stopped and smiled, allowing a little pride to spill out. "I think you underestimate what my human education gave me to control my thoughts, feelings, and actions."

Kuenai cleared his throat again. His eyes, surrounded by fleshy lids, darted from the open doorway and then to Rin's chin. "It was not of Saya that I wished to speak this day. Lady Rin will soon by Lord Sesshomaru's wife. There is a delicate, difficult matter to address regarding this."

Rin stared at the old inuyoukai teacher and felt her throat spasm with the urge to laugh. _He wants to talk to me as if I'm a new bride about to go to her marriage bed!_ It was, effectively, the birds and the bees. Rin had had that discussion when she had been living and being educated as a young teen at Jouka palace, now burned to the ground and gone. An old maid had taken her aside when she had begun bleeding for the first time and had gently explained the nature of sex to her. Desire had come later, when she saw Sesshomaru again with the eyes not of a girl, but of a young woman, ripe for marriage.

Yet, even as she realized what Kuenai was trying to say, Rin felt baffled. It was foolish to imagine that Kuenai would approach such a topic without great need and he knew as well as anyone else that she was no virgin. Saya had not been made of clay and magic after all. What was there that had possibly changed about the sexual act now that her body had transformed?

"I do not know how such things go on between humans," Kuenai muttered, staring off to one side of Rin with mounting frustration and embarrassment. "But I suspect there will be much that is different and changed. Forgive me, but Lady Rin has never experienced a _heat_, and it is a very alarming thing among female inuyoukai the first time…"

Kuenai stopped when Rin made a small hissing noise and cocked her head, sensing another's presence. "I should close the door," she muttered.

She rose to her feet and crossed to the open doorway, but halted when she inhaled and caught Sesshomaru's scent. "Lord Sesshomaru is coming with a maid," she announced.

Kuenai grunted. "Perhaps _he_ would be the proper teacher in this matter."

Rin felt a nervous flutter in her stomach. She tapped her clawed fingers against the paper screen on the door. She didn't look back at Kuenai. She tried not to hope that Sesshomaru had come to save her from this difficult and awkward subject. Perhaps Sesshomaru had avoided her because there was some awful thing she didn't know about inuyoukai sex, though the prospect seemed doubtful.

When the maid escorting Sesshomaru reached the open door she bowed and at once scurried passed the room, only pausing to direct Sesshomaru's attention unnecessarily to their destination. "Lady Rin and Master Kuenai, my lord."

Sesshomaru was solemn, tall, proud, and handsome in a new way that Rin had never known before. Something in his scent, the ethereal presence and power he exuded attracted her like bees to flowers. She bowed to him, letting her long, unrestrained hair fall over her shoulder to expose her neck. Rin saw his shoes, stiff boots that he almost never took off.

"Lord Sesshomaru," Kuenai greeted his former student, bowing from his spot on the floor. "Lady Rin and I were just conducting the lessons you asked me to give her. I do believe they have been quite successful. However, the topic I wanted to cover today I do believe you would be the best teacher."

"The lesson will continue another time," Sesshomaru said, coldly. "Go."

"Of course." Kuenai grunted as he rose to his feet and bowed to excuse himself. Rin followed him with her eyes and noted with irritation and amusement that he had left his scrolls behind.

"Rin," Sesshomaru said. His voice had changed from moments ago when he had dismissed Kuenai. It had dropped, losing its smooth, colder edge.

Startled, Rin lifted her head and abandoned her bow to regard him as his equal, staring up into his perfect, sculpted eyes, lips, and nose as well as the chin that was not too strong, but art-like, dreamlike. That was how she had seen him as a human woman, but as she gazed at him, Rin became aware for the first time of pores, of tiny lines around his eyes and on his lips.

"Come with me," he ordered.

She moved to follow and then stopped, remembering the scrolls. Without calling out, Rin pivoted on her heel and rushed back through the small musty room, snatching them up. Outside in the hallway, Sesshomaru had not stopped but he had cocked his head, clearly listening for her tread.

As she followed behind him, Rin watched the shift of muscles beneath the luxurious fabric of his robe, the broad bunching of the shoulders and then the long, sinuous valley that ran along the center of his back. His robe was not formal and not thick, matching the summer weather. Sesshomaru almost never wore hakama without a kimono over-shirt. Just as he rarely removed his shoes, Sesshomaru was not a fan of unsecured, loose clothing. Although he lacked his armor and even carried no sword at his hip, Sesshomaru still wore two sashes at his waist, one white and simple like his kimono over-shirt, the other a light, dove-gray.

The scrolls that Kuenai had left were cumbersome, so Rin was relieved as well as exhilarated when she realized that Sesshomaru was leading her to her own bedchambers. She battled down her anticipation, certain that Sesshomaru would disappoint her.

Sesshomaru opened the screen door. Golden eyes trailed over her, glowing like coals, paradoxically hard and soft at once. Rin stepped passed him into her bedchambers. The room was bright with afternoon sunshine and fresh with incoming air from the windows. A maid was in the room, straightening up and changing out bed sheets and covers, checking over the clothes inside Rin's drawers, and even polishing the bronze mirrors. (A/N: Random note, apparently the Japanese did not have glass mirrors on their own. They used silver or bronze things instead. That is why you don't see glass panes in their windows in the anime. Glass mirrors arrived when European traders arrived, and I imagine it was a real marvel for the first Japanese to see themselves so clearly in what would look like perfectly frozen water that could be stood up on edge.)

The maid gawked for a moment when Rin entered the room, and then fell instantly into a bow when Sesshomaru came through the door as well. She hadn't expected her work to be interrupted. She was very young, only a teenager. Rin could not recall her name.

"Get out," Sesshomaru ordered.

The maid snuffled on her feet, her knees heavily bent and her head stooped. "Yes, my lord." She vanished out the door, closing it swiftly behind her, always averting her eyes from both Rin and Sesshomaru.

As soon as the door had slid shut, Sesshomaru was on her. Rin gasped and caught his scent in both her nose and her mouth simultaneously. She raised her hands to fend him off instinctually, but he was on her before she had registered his movement or any change in him. He was generally slow with her, or had been while she was human, restraining his predatory super speed and controlling his incredible strength.

His arms wrapped about her. Rin found herself pressed into his shoulder, inhaling his scent. Her heart jumped once, fluttering. Rin stayed motionless, immobilized with confusion. She found her voice and said, "Lord Sesshomaru?"

His only answer was to move, shifting his arms, brushing his hands over her shoulders and arms, then more slowly over her back. He dipped his head and Rin heard him inhale. His heartbeat was even and regular, but increasing slowly. Sesshomaru had once dwarfed Rin. Standing together, he could have and often had placed his chin onto the top of her head, but his greater height forced him to stoop and hunch his shoulders slightly to do it. Now, with her transformation, Rin found that her height had changed. Sesshomaru would have to lift his chin awkwardly to place it atop her head. He was only taller than her by about a foot. Rin could gaze straight ahead and into his mouth if he were to part his lips without lifting her head.

Rin stepped back slightly, as far as his arms would allow, and glanced up into his eyes. They were mostly closed and his face was calm, serene. He had an uncanny resemblance not to a dog, but to a contented cat, just waking from a refreshing catnap. More confusion made Rin stiff; impatient to understand what had inspired his bizarre change of heart.

"Lord Sesshomaru?" she asked again, more pointedly this time.

He made a small sound, a sort of nonverbal acknowledgement of her question. Then, blinking twice, he opened his eyes and gazed down at her, searching her face. While Rin stared back at him, she realized that his hands had begun moving with fresh energy up her back and to her neck. He ran two clawed fingers under and around the collar of her kimono, teasing the skin there. When his claws brushed a nerve, Rin shivered reflexively.

Sessomaru reacted to her minute motion, making another nonverbal noise, a half-whine in his throat that was very quiet. Rin wondered absently whether she would have heard it with her human ears, but the thought vanished when Sesshomaru closed the small gap, lowering his head to be on the same level as hers. He sniffed lightly and his nose and lips brushed her temple, then her cheek.

Rin inwardly maintained her irritation with his fickleness—first he had avoided her completely, and then quibbled over the number of children they should have, and then he had resisted and refused her obvious desire for him physically. Yet that emotion was difficult to recall with his closeness. She had what she wanted, did she not? But there was something missing, an unknown desire kept her spine stiffened and her hands still.

Sesshomaru controlled everything, even when they were intimate with one another. The night before he had placed a limit on the number of children she could bear. Was it only a male pride fueling that need for control? Or was it something she didn't understand? Sesshomaru was a creature of few words. For him there was no reason to explain himself.

The effect of his hands and his breath on her skin was undeniable, however much Rin might want to understand what had brought him to interrupt her lesson and take her into his arms, she wanted his closeness even more. Rin sighed and laid her head onto his shoulder, melting into his strength. Sesshomaru let out a small controlled growl. Rin felt her throat muscles constrict and nearly made a similar noise, but with a start she strangled it.

His mouth abruptly found her ear. His lips brushed over it first, up and then back down, but at the bottom he parted his lips and tasted her skin. The sudden warmth and wetness of his mouth made Rin hold her breath.

Sesshomaru pulled away after only a moment and let out a long, deep breath. He astonished her by speaking. "You are unhappy with me."

"No!" Rin protested. Her irritation for him flew onto herself for an instant. She had forgotten that Sesshomaru was as adept at reading her as she was at doing the same to him. Had she inadvertently ended this moment? She searched her brain, trying to wipe away the fuzziness of sexual desire, desperate to resume the previous bliss.

"A good wife does not lie," Sesshomaru murmured.

He was teasing. Though Rin was uncertain as to how she knew this, she felt it completely.

"A good husband does not keep his wife waiting!" she replied, using a more obviously playful tone to try and avoid offending him.

Sesshomaru growled. His hot, moist breath fanned out over her neck and jaw line and ear. "A thing that is not easy in coming is more thoroughly enjoyed once it has been attained."

Rin stared at the top of his robe, where the over shirt crossed over itself at the base of his throat. The pearly white skin, perfectly smooth, called to her. Muscles moved slickly under the skin, blood pulsed hot in his veins. Something scratched inside Rin, hungering, frantic to be released. Her mouth filled with saliva.

"A thing too easily obtained can be taken for granted," Sesshomaru went on.

Rin felt impatient, like a growing child waiting for a late meal. She swallowed a mouthful of thin saliva. Her tongue touched on one of her teeth and the sharpness stung, ready and eager to cut like the pointed edge of a knife.

"I did my waiting years ago," Rin muttered, growling.

Sesshomaru took her ear in his mouth again, making her gasp and clutch the front of his over-shirt. "Indeed," he purred.

Rin felt her heart pounding, a pressure building in her chest, a heat spreading through her. Her hands crawled over Sesshomaru's body with greedy relish. Her hands closed over the sash that kept the over shirt closed at his waist and tugged. Fabric stretched, creaking in Rin's sensitive ears.

"Take this off," she growled.

Sesshomaru responded with a mixture of quiet laughter—a very rare thing for him—and a growl that Rin interpreted as appreciative. Yet he made no move to help her tear his clothes off. His own hands did not move from their lackadaisical exploration and teasing quest, roving over her body, brushing the bare skin at her throat, upper back, and neck.

The sash came free, partly torn and slashed by Rin's claws. She flung it to the ground with real anger and then felt only excitement rush through her as she saw Sesshomaru's shirt falling open, exposing the hard lines of muscle, the smooth perfection of his hairless skin. On his hip bones, barely exposed, to the left and right, twin sets of double lines in fuchsia paraded over his skin. They drew Rin's attention as if she had never seen them before. She moved her hands and then her claw tips over them, distantly thinking of the mismatched colors spread out over her body.

Sesshomaru had acted imperceptibly while she was absorbed with the lines at his hips, tugging on her obi, loosening it. Rin felt it slipping, opening, loosening as he pulled on it in little motions, tiny movements of his wrists.

Rin looked up at his face and saw the mixture of adoration and amusement. His amber eyes glowed with a kind of reverence, something she had not seen in many years, not since the first time she had been pregnant, or when he had seen her at long last as a woman, not as the little girl he had resuscitated. The nearly unguarded, naked emotion set Rin suddenly alight.

She brought her hands up his body, over the dip of his waist, the rise and steady bumps of his rips. At his shoulders Rin pushed him, forcing his arms down away from her body as she stripped his over shirt from him. It fell onto the hard flooring with a whoosh of air and a gentle flop of fabric. When Rin kept pushing him backward, Sesshomaru latched onto her arms, holding to her but allowing her to drive him until they were close to her bed.

When Sesshomaru's ankle came in contact with the soft mattress of the futon, he fell and pulled her down with him. Rin landed on him, at once entangling her limbs with his as her lips, mouth, and teeth found his shoulders, his neck, and then his ear. Sesshomaru thrummed, an inhuman noise that had always thrilled Rin as a human and now it flowed through her like a drug, powerful and demanding. Her heart galloped inside her chest, her breath hitched in her throat. The gentle nuzzling, nipping, and tasting exploration she had started on his skin changed.

Her hands clenched up spastically, digging her claws into him, gripping him. Sesshomaru's thrumming changed tone, becoming harsher, harder. Rin reacted to it again, biting into his neck, beneath his ear. Warmth entered her mouth, a small amount of blood. Hot, salty, and alarmingly delicious. Sesshomaru's gasp was thick, breathy. It was not a noise of distress, and the thrum of pleasure had not stopped, but Rin's mind clamored in panic, caught between human sensibilities and her deeper physical inuyoukai instincts.

She pulled away, stumbling off the futon. Sesshomaru's face was open, his eyes fiery. He was at his most unguarded and expressive. His white hair, spread out like a mane around him when he had fallen onto the futon with her, was smooth like strands of silk, begging to be touched, to be felt and appreciated. His body screamed the same. It was odd seeing him in a state of partial undress. Sesshomaru had never been one to stall between being nude and fully clothed. He was not a creature of _betweens._

Rin's robe had fallen open, her obi had fallen in a long strand from the door to the bed, like a long, fattened python crawling after them. She considered pulling to robe closed, but dismissed it. There was no need for modesty between them.

"Rin," he said, his voice husky, her name on his lips barely discernible.

Rin could see the drops of blood, in a perfect half-circle on the side of his neck. She shook her head and wiped at her mouth, struggling to find words. When they did not come swiftly, Rin's face burned. She knelt and made herself useful, avoiding Sesshomaru's gaze. She took off his shoes, the boots of a warrior, not a lover.

"Rin," Sesshomaru called.

She didn't look up though her pulse was throbbing in her throat. She could smell his arousal, see it too. As she dug at his boots, yanking them off and tossing them aside—heaving them across the room was more like it tough Rin barely noticed that what amounted as no energy to her propelled the shoes much farther away than she intended—she considered untying his hakama. Normally Sesshomaru did it himself, though there were times when he had laid back and she had done all the work.

Sesshomaru sat up and snatched at her wrists, stopping them after she had tossed the second boot away. He glared into her face. "You cannot harm me."

Dimly, Rin recalled Kuenai's attempt to teach her about an inuyoukai _heat._ Was this what he had meant? That she would be drawn to draw blood from the one she loved in an act that was supposed to be about love, not violence?

"I bit you," she stammered.

"It is normal." His patience was thinning. His arousal was not. In another odd reaction, Rin realized that the mounting negative emotion in his gaze did not alarm her, it _excited_ her.

She shook her head helplessly. "I don't want to bite you."

"You cannot harm me," Sesshomaru repeated. He pulled on her hand, bringing it to where she had bitten him, forcing her fingers to run over the spot where his blood had already dried though Rin could still feel her saliva leaving the area moist. The wound had scabbed over almost the moment her teeth left it. Except for the blood there was no redness.

The sight and the sharp scent of blood, played cruel tricks inside Rin's inuyoukai brain. She wanted to taste, see, smell more of it, while her human soul and experience shied away from it.

"If you do not wish to bite me, then do not," Sesshomaru told her.

He pressed in close to her, his face to hers. He tasted the inside of her mouth. Rin realized with a jolt that as his tongue pressed into hers and moved along the inside of her lips that he was searching out not only her taste, but the taste of his own blood. His hands reached into her robe, running over the curve of her body from hips to breast. Sesshomaru dug his claws into her hips on the second pass, pulling her closer. He growled into her mouth with impatience that mimicked her own earlier.

The sharp sting of his claws sent a chill of pleasure through her. Rin crawled over him, straddling the hardness of his body beneath her with a mixture of awe and exhilaration.

Sesshomaru pushed the kimono from her shoulders, exposing Rin's body to the light. His attention strayed as hers had toward the hips. His eyes narrowed as he saw the change from her face to her hips. On her cheeks the markings were turquoise like Shimofuri's in color, but jagged like Sesshomaru's father's had been. At her hips the jagged marks were a differing color the same deep purple-blue that Inutaisho had shared.

Uncertainty made Rin pause, following his gaze and waiting with tenseness anew for his reaction. Sesshomaru moved on from the markings at her hips, touching and stroking the rest of her body. In the moment, the growing passion between them, there was no room for questions and concerns.

Rin's fingers found the ties on his hakama and worked through them mindlessly until they were undone and she could drag them off the very unconcerned Sesshomaru. The hakama joined the snakelike obi and the puddle of discarded kimono.

Sesshomaru sprang into action. Sitting upright, he pulled Rin into position, surging forward to meet her. Rin clung onto him, her claws drawing blood while Sesshomaru's returned the favor, guiding her hips.

The room swelled with the echoes as they cried out their ecstasy.

* * *

When Rin collapsed on him, panting and covered in a sheen of perspiration, Sesshomaru rolled backward over the futon, bringing Rin with him, curled against him. She shuddered, inside and out, sated and satisfied. She buried her face in the crook between his shoulder and neck, her hot breath somehow managing to cool his feverish, wet skin.

Closing his eyes, taking in the silence, Sesshomaru touched her silken hair, smoothing it beneath his hands and clawed fingers, aware of the dampness at her scalp and especially her temples. The heat had not yet passed out of his loins though he no longer ached and throbbed with passion and need.

Sesshomaru had stayed awake and alert all night, thinking over his own emotions and actions. He had feared that Rin would no longer be the same woman that had driven him so wild with desire as a mere human. There was also the problem of her changed carnal needs. Would she still fear receiving a bite? Would she be able to return the damage he dealt, meeting it with her own? With the light changing outside into the growing shadows of late evening, Sesshomaru had his answers. Rin was still Rin beneath her new markings and bloodlust.

It had been the right thing to do for her, to approach her this way before the wedding night. Rin was no virgin, but she had never had sex while being an inuyoukai. Now she would enter their marriage bed with no concerns as to what awaited within herself or him.

Good things were worth waiting for, at times, but not always.

There would be more to learn, new challenges to face. Sesshomaru would never had admitted to how much he valued the rare moments that he was able to lay still after, holding Rin close to him with the rest of the world faraway. It was a wonderful respite from the demands of the Western Lands, of his manipulative mother, of the future that lied ahead.

It was coming, and no matter how powerful Sesshomaru was, he did not have the power to halt the passage of time.

He laid motionless except for his slowing breathing, listening to distant birdsong and to the closeness of Rin's heartbeat. The rasp of his fingers on her silky hair was a lullaby as powerful as his mother's voice had been centuries ago. Time was already marching onward, but for those few precious moments, the world humored them both, allowing peace and serenity to descend over them.

All too-soon it would have to come to an end.

* * *

Endnote: Random sharing! So I found a whole bunch of new Muse songs. Muse is one of my favorite artists. So these are the lyrics for "Fury" which is dark and filled with heavy guitars/bass. I do love Muse for incorporating those dark, minor tones. That makes great mood music. But anyway, when I looked up these lyrics, I was really intrigued. As an English writing major I've done my fair share of textual analysis on poems and novels and such, so I know how this one is interpreted by myself. However, there was a comment argument on the lyrics page about whether this song's lyrics are atheistic. Supposedly at least one Muse member is an atheist, but a number of their songs do not match that (doesn't mean he isn't an atheist, writers can write things they don't believe, sometimes very powerfully). I think it's a pretty clear meaning: Why would one pray if they did not believe in a God (or gods)?

You can kind of see this influence, and my interpretation of it, in this chapter with Sess. A sliver of humanity left behind, an altered perception, a different feeling. A belief in afterlife, some guide or code to living a worthwhile life, these are things that are just about universal to humanity. But what are they to youkai? I guess I have suggested that perhaps they aren't, but there is the capacity, as Sess has discovered. So, what do you think? Does this song have a "lack of God(s)" interpretation? Or is that bogus?

_You're so happy now  
Burning a candle at both ends  
Your self-loving soothes  
And softens the blows you've invented_

_Breathe in deep and cleanse away our sins  
And we'll pray that there's no God  
To punish us and make a fuss_

_Crack's healing up  
Future soul forgive this mess  
You waste twenty years  
And wind up alone, demented_

_(x2)Breathe in deep and cleanse away our sins  
And we'll pray that there's no God  
To punish us and make a fuss_

And then this, I wanted to check where others have placed his markings so I searched for images of Sesshomaru… and randomly found this wonderful pic. I think there's a great theme here about human/youkai and this pic totally bring it up. Hopefully that link works. Don't see a way to put links into this thing. Just take out the spaces.

http://alexzoe. deviantart .com/art/Human-Sesshomaru-128126887


	42. Epilogue: Blessing and Curse

A/N: All right I came from my three hour linguistics class where I was (lightly) reprimanded for not taking notes (on material he covered last week, ugh!) and stuck sitting next to Mr. Sniffles. Now, don't get me wrong. I have allergies and I have had colds and they SUCK. Caps intended and needed! But this guy has been sniffing loudly right next to me for SIX WEEKS. I have allergies, but you know, snuffling only hurts the nasal passageways more and clogs them with inflammation. It's like scratching the same section of skin over and over again. Yeah, irritation. It's also irritating because I have to listen to FFFFFTT every minute or so. I mean, c'mon...blow your nose Sniffles, get some treatment! It's no fun for either of us. And then he scratches things and it's like impossibly noisy. Like his face and his nose are sandpaper. Ugh. Anyway...I was so, SO aggravated. SIX WEEKS of Mr. Sniffles in a once a week THREE HOUR lecture. And it is lecture, no one talks but the anally-retentive dude teaching it. SIX WEEKS of that is NOT a cold. It's time for some nasal treatment with antihistamines or hell, a KLEENEX!! Give us a break Sniffles!!

Yeah, so aggravated. Also this chapter did not come together the way I wanted it to. I could have written like a LOT more. But I wanted to get it done and I promised myself that if I wanted to, and if you all wanted to read it, I could write Meisomaru's birth (yeah, I'll give you 1 guess who Meisomaru is) in more detail as part of a different story. (Actually been working on it already, exerimentally.) Also, this chapter came out long. Bleck. Hopefully it is passable and even enjoyable.

Disclaimer: I do not own them.

Last Chapter: CITRUS!! Nom-nom-nom…Slurp!

* * *

**Epilogue: Blessing and Curse**

The wedding was small and very few inuyoukai or any other types of youkai were present as witnesses or guests. Daken attended, having shepherded gifts from Shiroihana to the bride and groom. Shiroihana also arrived, though did not approach either her son or her daughter-in-law initially, for once apparently deciding not to make her presence noticeable.

The ceremony was unremarkable. For inuyoukai there was little or no organized religion wrapped around the couple. Marriages were done as pledges of loyalty, though they were not always expected to last. Couples rarely entered a marriage out of love. There were many more important reasons to marry—producing legitimate heirs, uniting lands, ending wars and feuds, forming allies or alliances, and even just the simple slaking of lust. The female was more bound than the male, made to belong to the male, to lend her body as a tool of reproduction. She did this for the promise of protection, fair treatment, and honor. Or simply because it was what was expected of her.

Rin and Sesshomaru were rare for their attachment to begin with, but Rin's transformation spread by word of mouth, mumbled in awe until it was more myth than anything else. Rin had always been more like an inuyoukai than a human woman anyway. Humans who heard the tale were in measures intrigued or disgusted, wistfully jealous, or dismissive.

There was a new Lady of the Western Lands. Ginrei had never been well-known or very public, though it was widely known that Sesshomaru had two daughters, one or the other being illegitimate. Surely now there would be a son, a proper heir.

On the day of their marriage, Rin and Sesshomaru spent very little time together initially. Rin bathed and dressed in heavy, formal robes. The day was cool, chilling with the steady approach of autumn. Yet the heavy, stifling clasp of the robes, rich and white, heavily embroidered with symbols at the shoulders, sleeves, collar, and the bottom hem bathed Rin in her own perspiration. Over Rin's back, a white dog played, leaping between the clouds. While Hama and a few of the other maids prepared her hair and painted her face, Rin admired the robe in the mirrors, especially the white dog.

The robe was not a traditional white. Instead it was gold, brilliant and shining. Hama praised it as lovely, but Rin could see the other maids were uncertain of it. Though they stared with dismay at its beauty, they were dubious about the colorations, the embroidered symbols and the white dog at the back. Later Rin would learn that the robe had been supplied by Shiroihana. It was the robe that each of the empresses—once called goddesses—of the Kosetsu province had worn in previous generations to their weddings.

* * *

Sesshomaru was awake, bathed, and dressed before Rin and while Rin was preparing for the wedding ceremony, Sesshomaru watched over Saya. He had a retinue of maids and other servants follow him as he first woke Saya, taking her from Jaken's care, and then endured her questions as they walked to the bathhouse with the maids and servants following placidly.

In the bathhouse, Sesshomaru, who had already bathed, stood inside as the maids stripped his daughter out of her sleeping robes and ordered her into the massive, richly tiled bath, filled with fresh, steaming water.

"I had a bath yesterday, Father," Saya protested, hesitating before stepping into the water. She was already naked, her small, sexless body pink, contrasting with her white hair.

"You are having one today as well," Sesshomaru told her. (A/N: I think the Japanese were more lax about family nudity than we are. In _Tales of the Otori_ a father bathes very casually with his daughters, and in _Memoirs of a Geisha_ Sayuri mention that the Japanese have a term for a lot of people bathing together, of both genders. So, if they have a special word for it, it stands to reason it commonplace and normal. I know the Japanese were much cleaner than Europeans with frequent bathing.)

Reluctant but obedient, Saya hopped into the water. The resounding splash made the maids gasp and shield their bodies and clothes from the water. When Saya resurfaced and blew water out her mouth, more than one of the maids frowned. When one woman reached for her, holding the ceramic bottle with scented soaps, Saya ducked under the water. Her cheeks were puffed out as she held her breath. Her eyes opened and peeked up through the clear water at the frustrated maids.

Sesshomaru considered scolding her but decided against it. It was early. There was time enough for Saya to play. It was not as if Sesshomaru himself had not abused his own caretakers in a similar fashion once, long ago.

Eventually Saya let the maids grab hold of her and begin applying soaps, scrubbing at her skin with sponges and cloths, scratching at her scalp. Saya resisted getting out when they were at last finished, and Sesshomaru ordered her to come out to expedite the bath, much to the maids' relief. The maids dressed Saya in a plain bathrobe, creamy-white. Then they group exited the bathhouse together. The servants, who had waited patiently outside, cleaned up afterwards, emptying the bath and cleaning up the spilled oils and soaps and excess water.

In a dressing room down the hallway from the bathhouse, Sesshomaru watched as Saya wore makeup for the first time in her young life. Two maids applied it while the others held it or prepared it. The powder that paled her little face made Saya sneeze and complain. She tried to twist away from the maids, asking why they hadn't dressed her yet. When they insisted on the powder, Saya whimpered and sought Sesshomaru's aid.

"Father—it tickles my nose. They want to put it on me!"

"It is for the ceremony, Saya."

"I don't want it!" Saya's little hands curled up into fists.

Sesshomaru's face hardened. "You will wear it. You are the daughter of the Western Lands. You must act with honor. You must obey me."

"But Father—" She sounded as if she was about to cry, but Sesshomaru had lost his patience.

"You must not cry or we will be here longer. You will wash away the powder. Do not cry."

Saya turned back to the maids, to the mirrors. She stared straight ahead as the maids slowly, cautiously, lifted their brushes, pads, and fingers. They smeared a paste over her cheeks, around her eyes, then patted it down with a white powder. The whiteness crept over her face and neck, like clouds over a blue sky. Soon Saya's eyes were the only spot with color, bright gold glimmering like the sun through cloud cover. The crescent moon on her forehead had vanished, hidden behind the whiteness of the paste and powder.

The maids took a bit of coal and drew in her eyebrows as thin lines. Then they mixed colors, choosing a cherry blossom pink that one of them began to apply lightly around the corners of her eyes and over her lips. The last task was for Saya's inhuman markings. The maids took the pink that they had used about her eyes and on her lips and began mixing it with a red paste to mix it. The color changed into a maroon, pink-red. One maid carefully began applying it to a hard-edged tool like a pen to stencil it on.

They were going to color in the crescent moon on her forehead.

"Stop," Sesshomaru ordered.

The maids glanced up at him in alarm. "Sir?"

"Place that color on her cheeks below her eyes to match my markings."

"But her forehead—"

"Leave it white. Make no mark on it." As the maids worked to follow his orders, Sesshomaru stared at his daughter's transformed face. A pureblooded child of her age would be too young to take part in the ceremony. Hanone, if she had been at Nejiro, would not have obeyed her father and sat still, accepting the makeup. Sesshomaru, after discussing it briefly with Rin and Kuenai, had decided that Saya would act as a witness for the ceremony. Technically she was too young to be a witness, but with almost no living relatives for both Sesshomaru and Rin, Saya became essential to the traditional ceremony. She was related to both Sesshomaru and Rin, serving as witness for them both. Sesshomaru had sent an invitation to Shimofuri, mostly out of obligation to the new treaty designating them as allies. He did not know whether Shimofuri had chosen to come or not, and if he had, had he brought Ginrei or Hanone? Sesshomaru found it doubtful.

As for an adult witness…there was Shiroihana, but although Sesshomaru knew his mother was present—he could feel her aura as surely as he could feel the floor beneath his feet—she had not stepped forward to offer her assistance. That disturbed Sesshomaru and comforted him at once.

And it was Shiroihana's presence that had changed his behavior now. Daken had asked whether Saya had the crescent moon of the Kosetsu. That meant Shiroihana was curious about it. Daken had probably already seen Saya and knew she had it. He had probably already told Shiroihana about it. But, if there was a slim chance that Sesshomaru could hide the truth from his mother, he would do it.

The maids had finished. Saya no longer looked hanyou. The pinkness of her inuhanyou skin had vanished beneath the white paste. Her eyes were brilliant through the white paste, but without a lining to make them stand out she appeared more ethereal, almost ghostlike. Saya scowled at her reflection and bared her teeth at it.

"I look like a cloud, Father." She lifted a hand to touch it but a maid caught it and pushed it back down. "I don't like it," Saya grumbled.

"Promise that you will not touch it, Saya."

"Father!"

"Promise me."

Saya's shoulders slumped. "Yes, Father. I promise."

"Good. Now it is time for you to get dressed." He motioned and three of the maids hopped to their feet and moved for the drawers, pulling them open and riffling through until they brought out a white robe with a black obi, embroidered with Saya's name. Saya watched her reflection in the mirror sourly as the maids dressed her and secured her obi.

Seeing his daughter's frustration brought back Sesshomaru's concern for the future. His thoughts were dark and turned inward by the time the maids had finished. It was midmorning. It would not be long now.

* * *

The binding ceremony was held indoors, small and private. Only a few guards, maids, and guests were inside to see it. It was an internal room with no windows, so it was shady, lit only by the warm glow of several lamps. Sesshomaru and Saya were the earliest to sit aside from the guards. A few maids trickled in after, including Hama who sat near Saya, behind Sesshomaru, a place of honor for a maid.

The room had a scene of pines and leafless maples and other broadleaf trees. A winter scene of black trunks and evergreens on white. Sesshomaru felt the guards' eyes on Saya, though it was impossible to see where their attention really was through all of the ceremonial armor they had donned. There were two entrances to the room, one where members of the family would enter—Saya, Sesshomaru, Rin, and a few maids like Hama. The other doorway was where a servant led in invited guests and other important family figures—like Jaken and Daken and Kuenai.

After Jaken, Daken, and Kuenai had entered the room and taken seats surrounding the platform where the bride and groom would go through the binding ceremony of sipping sake, the servant announced another guest by kneeling just inside the doorway and calling out: "Lord Shimofuri of the Middle Lands!"

Sesshomaru did not bother to hide his interest as the young inuyoukai lord entered the room and approached the platform. His held was held high, his lips curled slightly in a smile. The servant called out: "His sister, Lady Tsukiyume!"

Sesshomaru smothered his surprise as the hanyou girl joined her brother, standing before the platform where Sesshomaru sat. Brother and sister knelt and bowed low, touching their foreheads to the floor for a moment before rising again. They were twin shapes of darkness, dark hair, one straight black and the other blue-black, their clothing dark and formal, their expressions somber and serene, but perhaps also amused.

At Shimofuri's hip there was not just one sword, but two. Sesshomaru bristled at the arrogance of his "ally" to be armed at a wedding. He did not have time to challenge the young lord before the servant called out: "Lady Shiroihana, of the Kosetsu Province…" there was a small fumble and then he added, "Mother of the Western Lands."

Sesshomaru had no doubt that that was something Shiroihana had forced the servant to add. She breezed in after he had announced her, staring brazenly at her son as she approached. She sat close to the platform, near Tsukiyume. When she bowed, Shiroihana did not touch her forehead to the floor as they had done. Sesshomaru felt as though he could read her mind: Why should she prostrate herself so low before the creature that she had bled and sweat to create? She had power over Sesshomaru that no other had because very simply, he owed her his existence.

Then, with what Sesshomaru took to be an almost deliberately visible motion, Shiroihana turned her head slightly and her eyes moved, landing on Saya where she sat, hidden behind Sesshomaru, further back on the platform. Her rosy lips curled in a knowing smile.

It was impossible to deceive Shiroihana.

Only a short time later more maids emerged, bowing and announcing that the ceremony was about to begin with Rin's entrance to the room. Rin came through slowly, solmennly, with her eyes downcast as per the tradition. The room bowed to her and murmured in greeting. Even Sesshomaru dipped his head. Only Shiroihana and Saya appeared to resist. Shiroihana because she was a queen in her own right, and being older than Rin, she held more seniority. Yet she _should_ have bowed and when Sesshomaru noted that she stayed nearly motionless, only dropping her eyes for a time to acknowledge Rin's entrance, he bristled again, eager to finish the ceremony and order Shiroihana away, out of Nejiro as the threat she was.

As for Saya, the little girl was lost in the ceremony, confused and distracted by her makeup. As her mother entered her little mouth fell open, gaping. The rich, heavy robes that Rin wore were more elaborate than anything Saya had ever seen her mother wear before. Rin's hair was pinned up and decorated, her face painted as heavily as Saya's was and more. Unlike Saya, who had a childish pink around her eyes and on her lips, Rin had been decorated with encircling her eyes at the top and black on the bottom. Her lips were like beading drops of fresh blood. The inuyoukai markings on her face had been painted in, jagged turquoise streaks. Her eyes glowed out, purple-blue.

Hama came forward from the back, bringing three cups with different symbols on them, as well as a porcelain vase filled with sake. She poured the sake into one of the cups and handed it to Rin before bowing and waiting. Rin lifted the sake cup up carefully and sipped three times. She passed it to Sesshomaru who finished the remaining sake in his three sips. The process repeated until all three cups had been sipped from and set aside. Hama took up the sake and the used cups and moved back behind the couple, near Saya again.

The couple joined hands and the scribe, sitting ready just off the platform, hauled the document and a prepared ink brush to Sesshomaru and Rin. They set their names to the parchment of the document and as soon as it had dried, the scribe took it away.

The binding was completed. The servant who had announced the arriving guests called out from the back, "The Lord and Lady of the Western Lands!"

The guests bowed before them again, honoring the new husband and wife. Shiroihana bowed this time, but did not touch her forehead to the ground. When she rose out of it she was smiling warmly, though when Sesshomaru gazed at her out of the corner of his eye, he was convinced that there was something dark in her golden eyes, something he was sure to hate.

* * *

Outside Nejiro, among the trees and under the sunlight Sesshomaru and Rin accepted gifts and well-wishers and bade their guests goodbye. The midday and early evening hours were warm and cozy, invigorating with the remnants of full summer even as autumn and the promise of a hard winter threatened.

Daken was one of the first to arrive and, aside from congratulating and flattering Rin, he recounted the gifts that Shiroihana had sent to Sesshomaru. It was here that Rin at last learned that the robe she was wearing was very, very old, a symbol of the feminine power of the Kosetsu, a mark of Shiroihana's acceptance of her son's new wife. Aside from that, Daken himself presented a set of fine armor for Sesshomaru and a polished wooden comb for Rin, and for Saya some slipper-like shoes.

Jaken's gift was in organizing the ceremony and the little imp did not visit the couple, though Sesshomaru often heard his voice screeching and shouting at servants and maids, controlling them with as much difficulty as a dog trying to herd cats.

Kuenai presented books and told them that he would gladly make a portrait of them both at their earliest convenience.

When Shimofuri and Tsukiyume appeared, bowing with pleasant looks on their faces, Sesshomaru was cold and suspicious.

"I did not think you would come," he said, upfront.

"How is Lady Ginrei?" Rin asked, concerned.

Shimofuri smiled genuinely. "I could not ask her to leave Hanone behind, but she would have liked to come. I brought Tsukiyume in her place." His eyes slid knowingly to Sesshomaru. "I felt my sister's presence would help prove to Lord Sesshomaru that I am eager for our alliance to be successful and ongoing. It is also only fair that since Lord Sesshomaru attended my wedding this past spring that I should return the favor."

Sesshomaru squared his jaw with minor irritation. That wedding had ended in disaster for Shimofuri's cousin and bride. Also, to his slight embarrassment—a rare emotion for the Lord of the Western Lands—Sesshomaru recalled that he had brought no gift to Shimofuri, a purposeful insult. Would Shimofuri return that favor as well?

"We have brought the Lord and Lady gifts," Tsukiyume said, answering Sesshomaru's silent question and deepening his uneasy embarrassment.

"There was no need," Sesshomaru said, trying to hide his humiliation.

Rin threw her husband a silent glare. "Thank you, very much. It will be much appreciated."

"For Lord Sesshomaru I brought this," Shimofuri said, stepping forward and searching with one hand through his blue-black robes before extending his hand. A small rolled document was there.

Sesshomaru took it almost with reluctance and opened it, scanning over it quickly. Rin leaned close to him to peek at it. After a moment Rin pulled away and asked, "This describes the betrothal of Hanone and young lord Boroya of the Northern Lands." Her voice said clearly, without her needing to express the question in words: _How is this a gift to Sesshomaru?_

"Lord Sesshomaru is Hanone's father by birth, but I have come to adopt her," Shimofuri explained. His blue-gray eyes darkened and his voice sharpened as he went on. "It is, therefore, not necessary that I ask Lord Sesshomaru's permission for such a betrothal. If Lady Ginrei approves, and I obviously approve, as well as Boroya's mother Lady Yamome from the North, then there is no reason legally why the betrothal and marriage cannot proceed. Yet, as my gift to Lord Sesshomaru, honoring our new alliance, I felt honor-bound to present in writing my plans for his approval because Hanone is his blood-daughter."

Tsukiyume cut in then, gently. "It is also a fine opportunity for us both to invite Lord Sesshomaru and Lady Rin to the Middle Lands, to the Nanka in the next few weeks for the betrothal ceremony between shishi-sama and Lady Ginrei."

Rin smiled widely. "Lord Shimofuri! You are getting married!"

Shimofuri bowed. His cheeks had flushed abruptly pink. He cleared his throat, trying to move on and disguise his boyish embarrassment. "Does Lord Sesshomaru accept this proposal involving the intended betrothal of his daughter?"

Sesshomaru nodded. "I offer my consent. I will give it in writing if you wish."

Shimofuri shook his head. "It is not necessary."

"For Lady Rin we have another gift," Tsukiyume announced, grinning. Her white dog ears flicked on her head and twitched eagerly. She pulled a small sack from her obi and offered it to Rin. "This is an herbal-charm. Our mother, Lady Taikokajin, took it as a remedy while in the later stages of pregnancy while she carried shishi-sama. It works in tiny amounts in a tea. It is tasteless though it smells minty. It will help the lady sleep while she is not with child too. It is a useful charm."

Rin bowed in gratitude. "Thank you, Tsuki."

"There is one last gift," Shimofuri said. He reached for his waist and Sesshomaru tensed as the young lord's clawed hands closed over the sashes securing two different swords to his side. Deftly, he untied one and brought it forward, bowing slightly as he presented it equally toward Rin and Sesshomaru.

"I have had a sword forged for Lady Ginrei that I will present to her as a betrothal gift in a few weeks. I have also provided Hanone with a small sword that she will use as soon as she is old enough to train. As she ages and progresses, I will have more swords forged and personalized for Hanone, but this first sword will stay with her. Hanone has often mentioned that she misses her sister. I thought that young Saya must be feeling the same way. Unlike Hanone, Saya is already old enough that she may begin training. I had this forged for her as a gift. The sword matches Hanone's. The swords are both short, for easy carrying and wielding, but they are also sister blades. This sister is _Reimai_, to speak to Saya and remind her of her younger sister. Hanone's blade is called _Esu._ It is my hope that they would never have occasion to draw swords against one another, even if they should never meet for a prolonged time ever again, but that their swords would end any confrontation, for they are sisters, and siblings should never take arms against one another."

Sesshomaru stared at the sword and made no move to accept it, thinking of his own brother, then of his mother, deceased father, and then at last of his daughters. Shimofuri had struck upon Sesshomaru's inward foreboding once more. It seemed to be another ill sign though Sesshomaru had never put stock in such things before.

Rin accepted the blade, bowing and thanking Tsukiyume and Shimofuri profusely. Sesshomaru came out of his reverie slowly and stared at the young lord. His shoulders and back released some of his tension. He was beginning to like this new ally of his, albeit reluctantly. Shimofuri would be a fine husband to Ginrei and an excellent father to Hanone. Indeed, already he was doing a better job of it than Sesshomaru had.

"Thank you, Shimofuri," he said, a little hoarsely. "We will see to it that Saya trains with _Reimai_. Rin and I will also attend your betrothal." Sesshomaru used an odd, awkward mixture of formal and informal words as he addressed the young lord, unwilling to acquiesce completely to him, but at the same time genuinely grateful and pleased at how things had turned out between them.

As they bade Shimofuri and Tsukiyume farewell, Sesshomaru saw in the distance, heading toward the open gates of Nejiro, his mother, Shiroihana. She had not stopped to speak to him before the ceremony and was clearly about to leave.

"Lord Sesshomaru?" Rin asked, startling him. He turned and looked at her, blinking but otherwise showing no sign of his alarm—yet Rin had noticed it. He could tell by the set of her eyes. "What's wrong?" she prompted.

With his peripheral vision, Sesshomaru kept track of his mother's form. She had been wearing light blue, topped as always by the white of the fur encircling her shoulders. She stuck out in the courtyard with the green leafed trees, bright green grass, and gray-brown of the gravelly path. She was not camouflaged, but she disappeared swiftly before Sesshomaru could reply.

He turned his head, searching for her, and saw nothing.

Rin leaned sideways, following his gaze. Just as he did, she saw nothing, only Shimofuri and Tsukiyume gradually moving along that path, heading out the gates of Nejiro castle. "What is it?"

Sesshomaru gave a short, fast shake of his head. "Nothing."

Shiroihana had gone and hopefully taken all trouble and threats with her. For now.

* * *

Unlike a human woman's body, which ideally had the possibility of conceiving every month with ovulation, an inuyoukai woman was more selective. Fertility was rarer and accompanied by a "heat" which felt more like an illness rather than an aching passion or a heated desire. Although married and comfortable, Rin did not conceive immediately. She had had time to look over the information Kuenai gave her, to intellectually understand the concept of a heat, but understanding it was very different from experiencing it.

One evening she felt unusually fatigued while sitting with Hama and Saya, practicing calligraphy. She pressed on through it and when they retired to bed that night, the three of them sharing Rin's large futon, Rin fell deep and headlong into strange dreams. She was four-legged, a dog with sleek blue-black fur and a bushy tail. She was sleek and lithe, fast and filled with energy. Then, she was covered with fleas.

Rin woke itching and scratching, uncomfortable and restless. Hama and Saya, lying sleeping on the futon, wrapped in the covers with her, overwhelmed her nose. Their bodies were too warm, their presence unwelcome. Troubled, irritated with her own bizarre instincts, Rin left Hama and Saya. She wandered around Nejiro, lost in her thoughts, but also at times not thinking at all. Time passed in strange increments, painfully slow when her skin crawled and itched, and then so swiftly that she felt weary, tired at other times.

By the time the sun rose, Rin felt restless again, but also feverish. She shivered and returned to Hama and Saya, nestling next to Saya especially and sleeping there until they awoke and the day began anew. Rin attempted to go through it normally, but every step of the day, from the bath oils which made her itch, to the sudden realization that Hama's voice grated her nerves, thwarted her efforts at a normal day.

She was ravenously hungry when she joined Hama and Saya for breakfast and lunch. When Rin went to have a lesson with Kuenai that afternoon, the old inuyoukai's scent made Rin nauseous. It wasn't long until Rin began snapping at him with mounting irritation and Kuenai, experienced in all of life's adventures, recognized her symptoms and her changing scent. At once he dismissed her, telling her to study on her own. His sudden reaction—almost of fear—only infuriated Rin further.

She went to find Hama and Saya in the fighting hall. In the last few weeks since the wedding, and the gift of _Reimai_ from Shimofuri, Sesshomaru had begun lessons for Saya with the rod and sword. First up for her to learn was a series of strength building exercises in stance. Saya spent several hours each day under her father's tutelage, either following him by example or listening as he instructed her. Rin often joined the lesson, engaging her daughter directly, though the height difference was extreme, making the task nearly impossible. Human servants, young boys, could be brought in, but Saya was not ready for true partner practice yet.

Even before Rin entered the fighting hall, Sesshomaru knew her scent had changed. He turned his head from watching Saya, instinctually and immediately drawn by Rin. He had thought that her heat was coming on, at last, but had said nothing about it. Now, overnight from when he had seen her yesterday evening to the present, Rin's scent had changed, announcing her readiness. A dark, insistent hunger leapt inside Sesshomaru, blotting out other concerns entirely.

Saya was moving over the floor in a premeditated set of steps, pausing in a crouched stance to strengthen her thighs and increase muscular endurance. Her small face was tight with concentration and streaked with moisture from sweating. She was in the middle of the lesson and enjoying it with a boundless enthusiasm when Sesshomaru suddenly interrupted her.

"The lesson is over today, Saya. Hama, take her outside to play."

Hama, sitting off the matting of the fighting hall, bowed. "Yes, my lord."

Saya turned to face her father with a small frown. Her golden eyes flew once to Rin and she smiled, but only for a moment before her attention went to Sesshomaru again. "Father! I want to do more! Was I doing well?"

"You were doing wonderfully," Rin said, smiling. Saya's workout was an excellent distraction.

"Momma," Saya cried out, grinning. "You want Father to teach me more, right? Or will you?"

"Go with Hama," Sesshomaru interrupted. "You did well for today. You should rest."

"I'm not tired," Saya protested. She puffed out her cheeks, blowing at a strand of hair that was falling into her sweaty face. She was dressed in gray clothes, loose pants that a boy would have worn topped by a kimono over shirt that smelled faintly, and wonderfully, of Sesshomaru's sweat. Saya had realized the moment she had received the clothes that they were Sesshomaru's from when he had been a mere pup. It thrilled Saya to know that she was wearing her father's clothes, moving as he moved, sweating into fabric that had absorbed his sweat so long ago. She reached up to her forehead and wiped at the sweat with the sleeve, then traced the crescent moon on her forehead reverently.

"We are finished today," Sesshomaru repeated, coldly. "Go with Hama."

"Daddy—"

"Go," Sesshomaru snapped.

Saya's shoulders drooped, her head fell forward. She turned her back on her father and marched away obediently. Hama took her hand and, nervously, cast a glance at both Rin and Sesshomaru. Then she scurried away, Saya trailing halfheartedly behind her.

"I could have continued the lesson," Rin murmured, disapproving of Sesshomaru's abrupt ending. "She's so eager to learn, why—"

Sesshomaru closed in on her aggressively, sniffing at her neck, touching her hair and then her waist. He pulled experimentally on her obi and Rin made a small noise of surprise. She took a step backward and bared her teeth at him like growling dog though no growl emerged from her throat. She felt unusually angry by his odd advance. "What's wrong with you?" she demanded.

Ginrei had once driven Sesshomaru mad with a similar scent, but that had been like a nightmare, a disturbing feverish dream of lust. The inuyoukai sexes were driven by one another's scents. When compatible, unrelated males and females cohabitated long enough the heat would come on. Within six months of any inuyoukai marriage the couple should experience a heat, sometimes it happened almost instantaneously. Sessomaru had felt a mild fear as the first weeks passed with no clear sign from Rin that they may not be compatible. Now relief swamped him, as well as carnal lust and a deeper desire, what he had come to realize was love.

As Rin stared at him, startled by his sudden approach, Sesshomaru realized that she did not know. She had been studying these things, details that separated her from human women now, but she did not recognize it. It was still early in the heat. The scent about her had not peaked with ovulation. Her own experience of the heat would change the longer it went on. Eventually she would know undeniably what it was, whether he vocalized it or not. She would be tormented by her body, driven to him by scent and instinct, writhing with restlessness, only able to find respite if she was with him. Ginrei had been the same way, but they had both resisted the outcome—which only prolonged the torture.

Sesshomaru's instinct was to cover Rin now, to follow her like a shadow, to glue himself to her, to guard her possessively like a dog over his bone. (A/N: Ha!) It was an ancient instinct, borne in the wild past when Sesshomaru could have faced rivals and would literally have dropped everything else for a week to make sure he was the only one that mated her. Those animal instincts made him aggressive, demanding.

He moved forward suddenly, pinning Rin to the wall. Rin gawped, her mouth wide open in shock, but then her brow furrowed and she attacked him. Pushing at him, clawing. Sesshomaru backed away when her claws bit into his skin, tearing through his thin blue and white training robe. Thankfully she drew no blood and Sesshomaru regained some of his control, moving away. He circled her like prey, hungrily taking in her flushed face, the curve of her body through the pesky clothes.

"What's wrong with you?" Rin demanded again, but she was shivering and her eyes had darkened.

Sesshomaru fought for and found speech. "It is your time. Your scent has changed."

Rin was frowning, gradually coming to a realization. She looked away from him, at the ground. An old flare of red marked a blood stain toward one corner of the fighting mat. "It's not like I imagined." She crossed her arms over her chest, a defensive, closed off position. "I just feel off, sick." _Was this how Ginrei felt? _And to think, Rin had envied her.

"It is early." The side of her obi looked loose where he had tugged it. Sesshomaru's hands twitched, growing hot and damp with mounting eagerness and arousal. There was a fast way for her to feel better. Her body would respond. The heat was like an illness, but it was only torturous when the female could not mate because she had no one suitable. A wife with an eager husband had no reason to suffer long with it.

Sesshomaru approached her again, a little slower this time. When she did not flinch or flee from him, Sesshomaru pressed his body close to hers, touching his face to Rin's neck, then her cheek and her ear. "There is only one treatment."

Rin laughed suddenly. Her body was shivering but Sesshomaru's scent was already calming her restlessness, the uncomfortable itching and aching. She wrapped her arms around him, clinging onto him tightly. "I wish every illness had that kind of treatment!"

Sesshomaru growled in her ear, already beginning to thrum deep in his chest with anticipatory pleasure. It could be as much as a week before Rin returned to normal, and by then new changes would already be at work within her as their first legitimate child took root within her. There had been things Sesshomaru wanted to do in that timeframe: check on the reconstruction of Jouka palace, check on his mother and test her loyalties, flush out any hidden plans she might have that could concern him, and also acquire gifts for Shimofuri and Ginrei's upcoming betrothal. Yet with Rin at last fertile and soon to be pregnant, all of it would wait. He would not leave her side until the heat had passed.

* * *

When the trees had all just begun to change their leaves from the summer finery of green to yellows, oranges, and reds, Rin conceived.

As she had been with her other pregnancies while human, Rin was careful and cautious, doing nothing that would be physically taxing, eating and drinking as much as she could stand. Sesshomaru made sure she took all her meals from one trusted cook, never from anyone else that could have been bribed. Kuenai prescribed rich, fattening food. Rare, even raw meat and fish, soybean, and other green leafy plants that would strengthen her and the baby. Although much of the food he promised would be good for her would have disgusted her as a human, Rin developed a liking, even a craving for rare and raw meat.

After a little more than a month, Rin realized that this pregnancy felt different from the others. She was not tired often and never sick to her stomach. She took on a glow, suffused with happiness and joy. Her old memories of the miscarriages seemed to shrivel and disappear. There was no reason for her to feel so confident that this baby would be different, other than her own excellent mood and health, but Rin felt an attachment to the child, a connection. She felt it as surely as she knew that the sun would rise again each night after it had set. She felt as if she could touch the tiny, unformed child's mind, his soul, and feel his strong hold on her womb, his energy and vitality. Nothing she could do would dislodge him before he was good and ready.

When the date of Shimofuri and Ginrei's betrothal celebration arrived, Sesshomaru sent simple gifts by way of Jaken and Daken, as well as his apologies that he and Rin could not attend. He refused to travel so early in Rin's pregnancy. Only a short time later Sesshomaru caught the scent of male hormones on Rin and pronounced the baby as a boy. The long awaited heir of the Western Lands.

The castle was filled with joy and excitement at the prospect of a son. It was the stuff of fairytales and dreams, and even to the common folk, mere human villagers and farmers who had never set eyes on Sesshomaru, it was cause for celebration, symbolic of good luck in the coming year and harvest for next summer and fall. It was also exciting simply because the Western Lands had not seen a baby boy for centuries, not since Sesshomaru himself had been born.

For a short time this excitement swept Saya up with it. She lay with her mother at night, tucked close to her, staying awake while Hama fell asleep. Rin and Saya reconnected deeply at long last, wound together in the tender darkness. Delighted by curiosity and Rin's own private rapture, Saya huddled next to Rin's stomach, listening with her human shaped ears to the sounds, whines and gurgles from her digestive system at work. Occasionally she caught the murmur, the fast whirring of another sound, the baby's heartbeat, trapped by Rin's flesh, buried deep. She hummed to it, wondering if it would talk back to her. She remembered her little sister Hanone, a little person like herself, just the right size and filled with energy. While Saya was cocooned in this awe, Rin stroked her daughter's hair and smiled down at her, whispering stories or humming songs.

As winter came, carpeting the gray-green, dying earth with a blanket of beautiful snow, Saya, Hama, and Rin played in it, making sculptures if they could. Hama always caught a chill the fastest and retreated inside or under some eaves to shiver, leaving Saya and Rin together. The pregnancy began to show, making Rin a little slower and more cumbersome, but not as much as she would have been while merely human. Rin felt so well that she even taught Saya a few moves casually with the pole while Sesshomaru watched them with quiet amusement and swelling pride.

Yet at night Rin's expanding belly began to be a physical barrier. Saya listened to it, wondering what a little brother would be like, and then thinking this strange lump inside her mother was lazy and fat, taking up so much room, keeping her pushed away. And he was slow. She waited impatiently for him to "come out" like everyone else, until Rin began to pale.

The baby took Rin's energy, leaving her lethargic. The snows were running late, at their deepest of the season, and Rin was gradually nearing her time, but the pregnancy had at last begun to take its toll. Rin slept deeply and for longer periods. Soon she snapped at Saya for waking her. The cold depressed her, there was no more playing outside. Saya wanted to go back to their sculptures before the sun came out and melted them, as Hama promised it would, but Rin did not have the energy and though Hama was happy to do it, Saya didn't want the maid, she wanted her mother.

Sesshomaru began to attend her lessons more often, guiding her calligraphy, reading, and math as well as the physical training. Then he replaced Rin entirely. Saya enjoyed seeing him, but Sesshomaru had other things to occupy his time and his worry for Rin often made him short with Saya. On more than one occasion Sesshomaru snapped at Saya for making a sloppy character, putting a line or dash where it did not belong, or forgetting what a character meant completely. When he scolded her enough, Saya burst into tears. Her teardrops further irritated the lord of the West as they fell onto the practice sheets of paper and wetted them, making the paper crinkly and fragile once it dried.

She strove to impress Sesshomaru, but the pressure often led to mistakes, and Sesshomaru was strained with worry over Rin's weakening and the approach of his son's birth. It only worsened as time went on.

Kuenai suggested that Hama and Saya stay away from Rin as the pregnancy progressed, coming towards an end. Saya sobbed and shouted, protesting when Sesshomaru ordered that Hama take Saya to a different room in another wing of the castle. Hama reiterated over and over again to the heartbroken, lonely Saya that the change was part of growing up. She could not always share her mother's bed, especially with her little brother, the new baby boy on the way.

"You are growing up," Hama reassured her, rubbing the inconsolable Saya on the back. "You must be brave and strong. You are Lord Sesshomaru's daughter, after all. And Lady Rin's…"

Saya cried herself to sleep and woke with new eyes. The castle's excitement filled her with bitterness. The lump in Rin's stomach had been the first physical separation Saya had had since returning to her parents' care after the earthquake and Inuyasha had watched over her. Now it seemed that she was going to lose her parents again, not from an outside force, but from within. For the first time she began to perceive the added connotations of greatness that a _boy_ had over a _girl._ The servants and even Hama did not merely call the new pup a baby; they were stuck on it being a _boy._ Saya realized that _she_ was fundamentally _different_ from this new child, this new sibling, in many, many incontrovertible ways.

When the snows began to melt and rain fell from the sky instead of snow, Sesshomaru sent for his mother. It was a reluctant and difficult decision, made when he decided that another inuyoukai woman would be Rin and the baby's best bets for health and safety. He had Jaken follow her and watch her as much as possible, whenever he wasn't doing it himself.

Shiroihana turned out to be very useful. She reassured Rin as no other could that her growing weakness was normal. Inuyoukai women suffered the most at the end of the pregnancy. In fact, the weaker a mother was, generally, the stronger a pup was. She advised Rin to keep her spirits up and brought her different books and scrolls, or regaled her with stories from her own travels and tales of when Sesshomaru had been a child. Like Sesshomaru, however, Shiroihana had little time for Saya, though Saya was fascinated by the older woman who looked and smelled so like Sesshomaru. By scent she knew this woman was Sesshomaru's mother, her grandmother, but she had not been introduced to her in that way informal, friendly way. Saya watched Shiroihana whenever she got the chance, and sometimes caught an inkling that Shiroihana _was_ interested in her too, but the older woman masked it well and spent most of her time with Rin.

* * *

At last the time came and the new baby was born. In spite of her weakness while pregnant, Rin gave birth quickly and with little trouble. She felt almost immediately better, relieved and overjoyed to hold her son. The castle rejoiced with her. Sesshomaru visited only a few hours after the child had been born, to meet his son for the first time.

He was not pleased that Shiroihana had not left yet, but at the same time he could not deny that she had a right to see her grandson, though it irritated Sesshomaru that Shiroihana had seen the baby before he had.

Rin's bed chambers had a sharp salty smell of amniotic fluid, as well as the sharp metallic tang of blood. There were better smells than those however; there was the scent of a new family member, of his heir. Rin had spent her time after the birth cleaning up and nursing the tiny boy. Her face was aglow as Sesshomaru knelt at the side of her futon, her lips parted and curved in an enormous smile showing all of her white teeth. Shiroihana was sitting closer to the wall, behind Sesshomaru. Her breathing was deep and steady and she had been smiling and stroking the fur on her shoulders when he had come in. Sesshomaru battled away that distraction as Rin shifted and brought out a good-sized bundle from beneath the thick covers of her futon.

"Lord Sesshomaru," she murmured, her voice slightly hoarse. "Your son." The bundle squirmed and kicked and made a small, low noise, not a cry but a faint growl.

He hesitated, moving slowly with awe, and accepted the baby, shrouded by his white sheet. Sesshomaru brought the baby into his arms carefully, with the utmost tenderness, and peeled the sheet back from the baby boy's body. His eyes were squeezed shut, his tiny face crinkled from birth. He held his legs tucked upward, against his little plump stomach, but his arms reached outward, pawing greedily, searching for his mother. He turned his head this way and that, moving his lips to reveal toothless gums.

He smelled sweetly of milk, but also of Rin's blood and amniotic fluid. The scent brought Sesshomaru back to Saya's birth, the traumatic and gut wrenching moments when he had been sure she was going to die bringing a worthless hanyou girl into existence. Saya was by no means worthless to him, neither then or now, but society as a whole saw her as useless, being a girl and hanyou, impossible to marry in the clan, nothing but a burden to him. And Sesshomaru, a new father, had not been sure how to react to his own offspring. He had not known what to feel, or how to act. It had all been so odd, so uncertain…

Now he touched his son reverently, and the tiny boy grabbed one of his fingers with surprising strength, pulling it toward his mouth. He whimpered when his mouth brushed his father's claw and turned his face away, unsatisfied. He whimpered, wanting Rin, but Sesshomaru was not willing to return the infant yet. Sesshomaru touched the baby's black hair, still damp from birth, and then tenderly touched his cheeks. The inuyoukai marks were faint there, still forming. They would darken as he grew, but Sesshomaru thought that they were the same color has his own, pink-red, one smooth streak on each cheek.

_Like Mother's,_ Sesshomaru thought. There was no mark on the baby's forehead. He had not inherited the crescent moon of the Kosetsu. Could Shiroihana still try to steal the baby away somehow? She had shown far too much of an interest in _his_ children. Sesshomaru lifted the baby up touching his nose and lips to the baby's chest, inhaling and memorizing this first, earliest, innocent scent.

As he lowered the baby, Rin said, "We have to think of a name for him."

"I will be of no help there," Shiroihana announced, chuckling pleasantly. "I named my son after my younger brother. Very creative, was it not? But it suits you, doesn't it, Sesshomaru?"

Sesshomaru ignored her, though inwardly he thought with disgust: _There is no way I would name my son after my younger brother._

Sesshomaru gently passed the infant boy back to Rin. "We will come up with a name together."

Rin took their son and held him close to her, smiling blissfully down at him.

* * *

Seven days after he was born, the tiny little heir to the Western Lands was named Meisomaru. He had started to open his eyes often enough that his mother could make out his eye color as being gold like Sesshomaru, Saya, and Shiroihana. Unlike them he had Rin's blue-black hair.

It was several days after the birth before Saya met her little brother. He intrigued her and disgusted her in measures. Seeing the way Rin doted on him, carrying him everywhere, cooing and touching him constantly, praising him, all of it set a dark, angry light in Saya's eyes. Rin took Meisomaru to their lessons, where the baby constantly disrupted her teaching. Saya had hoped to share her mother's bed once more after she had recovered her strength, but Rin was too concerned that Saya might squash the baby in her sleep if she shared her bed with the baby. And of course, the baby's privilege to sleep with Rin could absolutely not be questioned.

Sesshomaru continued to teach Saya how to fight, and he no longer picked on her as hard as he had with Rin recovered and the baby born. Yet if Rin watched her lesson, she always had Meisomaru with her and the baby gurgled and burbled and growled. And over those baby noises Rin would sometimes whisper to him, disturbing Saya's concentration. The silence of the fighting hall was never complete when she was there, and neither was Sesshomaru's attention at those times. While he instructed Saya, he didn't watch her with the same intensity that he did when Rin and Meisomaru were gone.

The heir of the Western Lands, an impossible, beloved miracle to everyone else in the castle, became Saya's own private enemy. The laughing, innocent girl, as she approached her fifth birthday, had become a harder, darker child who viewed the world with knowing eyes, understanding that she was _different._ The emotions were difficult and complex, weighing her down inside, but Saya knew better than to express them. Everyone loved Meisomaru, saying anything against him would only make Rin and Sesshomaru hate her. Saya understood that they still loved her, but the angry seed of jealousy—of the distance and difference she perceived between herself and her brother—could not be weeded out.

Sesshomaru and Rin were not blind to her dislike. Saya did not speak outright about her feelings, but it was not as if she had developed Sesshomaru's stoniness overnight. A frown, a glare, an angry sigh were easy giveaways. There was not much that they could do to change her perception, only reassure her that they loved and cared about her and hope that in time she would come to terms with Meisomaru.

Blessing and curse, one in each hand. Even something as beautiful and blessed as the birth of a son could have a darker side. Only time and fate could tell just how dark it could get.

* * *

Endnote: So this leads up to Saya as she is seen a little in _Innocence, _kind of quietly at war with her parents and her little brother. Hmm...now what do I do with myself?? AHHH!!


End file.
